The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the impact of domain and methodological tutorials on the attitude and performance of end-users who are neither well-versed in the domain area nor well-versed with an expert system which is designed to assist them in solving software selection tasks. With respect to these tasks and the mechanism for accomplishing them, the end-users can be categorized as "non-technical users." The design of this experiment was a 2 x 2 full factorial laboratory experiment employing eighty novice users as subjects. Each of the experimental subjects was randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups corresponding to receipt or lack of receipt of tutorials concerning the problem domain and methodology employed by an expert system. The results of this research indicate that there is a significant interaction between receiving the application and expert system tutorial videos; better performance in terms of correct categorization of problems was observed in subjects who saw either both or neither video whereas worse performance was observed in subjects who saw only one video. In general, the video treatments were unrelated to a variety of attitude measures applied to the subjects. However, it was found that prior attitudes towards the use of computers were significantly related to the majority of the (posttest) attitude measures. Further, the general pattern was for attitudes towards computers to improve as a result of undergoing the experimental process with the viewing of the expert system video to be significant in the level of improvement.

"Intelligent Tutoring Systems have historically been shown to be an effective means of educating an audience. While there is great benefit from such systems they are generally very costly to build and maintain. It has been estimated that 200 hours of time is required to produce one hour of Intelligent Tutoring System content. The Office of Navel Research has funding this thesis because they are interested in reducing the cost of construction for Intelligent Tutoring Systems. In order for Intelligent Tutoring Systems to be widely accepted and used in the classroom environment there needs to be a toolset that allows for even the most novice user to maintain and grow the system with minimal cost. The goal of this thesis is to create such a toolset targeted towards the Assistments Project. One of the goals of the Assistments Project is to provide a means for teachers to receive meaningful data from the system that they can take to the classroom environment thus enabling a comprehensive learning solution. The effectiveness of the toolset was measured by its ability to reduce the overall time taken to package and distribute content in an Intelligent Tutoring System by providing the tools and allowing the completion of the tasks to be at a reasonable speed."

Intelligent Tutoring Systems are notoriously costly to construct, and require PhD level experience in cognitive science and rule based programming. The purpose of this research was to ease the development process for building pseudo-tutors. Pseudo-tutors are ITS constructs that mimic cognitive tutors but are limited in that they only apply to a single problem. The Assistment Builder is a tool designed to rapidly create, test, and deploy simple pseudo-tutors. These tutors provide a simplified cognitive model based upon a state graph designed for a specific problem. These tutors offer many of the features of rule-based tutors, but with shorter creation time. The system simplifies the process of tutor creation to allow users with little or no ITS experience to develop content. The system provides a web-based interface as a means to build and store these simple tutors we have called Assistments. This paper describes our attempt to make the process of developing, testing, and deploying content easy for teachers. We present data to suggest that users can develop a tutor that can be released to students in approximately an hour.

A major issue in Intelligent Tutoring Systems is off-task student behavior, especially performance-based gaming, where students systematically exploit tutor behavior in order to advance through a curriculum quickly and easily, with as little active thought directed at the educational content as possible. The goal of this research was to explore the phenomena of off-task gaming behavior within the Assistments system, as well as to develop a passive visual indicator to deter and prevent off-task gaming behavior without active intervention via graphical feedback to the student and teachers. Traditional active intervention approaches were also constructed for comparison purposes, and machine-learned gaming-detection models were developed as a potential invocation and evaluation mechanism. Passive graphical interventions have been well received by teachers, and results are suggestive that they are effective at reducing off-task gaming behavior.

Detection and prevention of off-task student behavior in an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) has gained a significant amount of attention in recent years. Previous work in these areas have shown some success and improvement. However, the research has largely ignored the incorporation of the expert on student behavior in the classroom: the teacher. Our research re-evaluates the subjects of off-task behavior detection and prevention by developing metrics for student engagement in an ITS using teacher observations of student behavior in the classroom. We present an exploratory analysis of such metrics and the data gathered from the teachers. For off-task prevention we developed a visual reporting tool that displays a representation of a student's activity in an ITS as they progress and gives a valuable immediate report for the instructor.

The Common Tutor Object Platform (CTOP) was designed as a lightweight component framework for creating and deploying applications relating to Intelligent Tutoring Systems. The CTOP supports a runtime for intelligent tutoring system content deployment, a content development environment, an extensive reporting tool, and other smaller applications. The CTOP was designed with future development in mind, allowing easy specification of new base objects and extension points for future development. It has been used as the foundation of the Assistments Project, a wide scale server based ITS deployment. This thesis documents the software engineering aspects of the project. The Assistments Project is capable of supporting a quarter of targeted students in Massachusetts, and optimistically scalable to the entire state and beyond.

邱家偉. / Thesis submitted in: December 2009. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-227). / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Qiu Jiawei. / 中、英文摘要 --- p.i / 鳴謝 --- p.iii / 目錄頁 --- p.iv / Chapter 第一章 --- 前言 --- p.1 / Chapter 一、 --- 社會學、社會脈絡與生命歷程 --- p.4 / Chapter 二、 --- 自反性：風險和安全感之平衡 --- p.6 / Chapter 三、 --- 全文內容及重要性簡介 --- p.8 / Chapter 第二章 --- 文獻回顧 --- p.11 / Chapter 一、 --- 自反性現代化 --- p.11 / Chapter 二、 --- 本體性安全感與傳統社會 --- p.13 / Chapter 三、 --- 風險社會與新風險 --- p.16 / Chapter 四、 --- 生命歷程社會學 --- p.27 / Chapter 五、 --- 自反性現代化對生命歷程的反動 --- p.36 / Chapter 第三章 --- ?究問題和方法 --- p.38 / Chapter 一、 --- 孩童時代 --- p.38 / Chapter 二、 --- 近年香港情況 --- p.51 / Chapter 三、 --- ?究問題 --- p.53 / Chapter 四、 --- ?究方法 --- p.55 / Chapter 第四章 --- 學習社會及課外活動制度化 --- p.61 / Chapter 一、 --- 學習社會 --- p.61 / Chapter 二、 --- 香港作?學習社會´ؤ´ؤ孩童時代的發展 --- p.66 / Chapter 三、 --- 孩童閒暇生活與課外活動的發展 --- p.72 / Chapter 四、 --- 全天候的學習社會 --- p.88 / Chapter 第五章 --- 孩童閒暇時間之專業化及規範化 --- p.90 / Chapter 一、 --- 興趣班風潮´ؤ´ؤ課外活動市場化 --- p.90 / Chapter 二、 --- 興趣班風潮的專業論述 --- p.97 / Chapter 三、 --- 系統入侵孩童時代´ؤ´ؤ閒暇生活規範化 --- p.109 / Chapter 四、 --- 市場化、專業化與制度化´ؤ´ؤ現代性的吊詭發展 --- p.122 / Chapter 第六章 --- 家長的自反性培育 --- p.134 / Chapter 一、 --- 成?父母的風險與焦慮 --- p.135 / Chapter 二、 --- 家長的自反性培育心態 --- p.143 / Chapter 三、 --- 全方位的競爭´ؤ´ؤ焦慮風險的惡性循環 --- p.157 / Chapter 四、 --- 刻不容緩的壓力 --- p.168 / Chapter 五、 --- 自反性孩童時代´ؤ´ؤ充滿競爭的社教化環境 --- p.172 / Chapter 六、 --- 自反性培育方式 --- p.182 / Chapter 第七章 --- 自反性生命規劃´ؤ´ؤ吊詭的生命歷程 --- p.192 / Chapter 一、 --- 實證反思 --- p.194 / Chapter 二、 --- 理論反思 --- p.203 / Chapter 三、 --- 全文結語 --- p.214 / 附表 --- p.217 / 參考資料 --- p.221

Numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits peer tutoring provides to the tutee. However, studies measuring the benefits peer tutoring provides to the tutor are limited in quantity, detail, participant numbers and breadth. This study measured the benefits 151 peer tutors reported after peer tutoring for a semester in a special education class for students with severe disabilities. Peer tutors reported benefits in an essay response to the prompt: "What do you feel you have gained as a result of being a peer tutor?" The study identified the most common benefits obtained by peer tutors as measured by peer tutor generated responses of general peer-tutoring benefits. Findings suggest an extension of peer-tutoring benefits beyond the tutee exclusively and to the peer tutor.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 82-85). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.