A dialogue method for assisting students in understanding causalities in physical systems

✍ Scribed by Ken'ichi Asami; Akira Takeuchi; Setsuko Otsuki

• Book ID: 101303042
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 228 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0882-1666
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-684x(19980615)29:6<1::aid-scj1>3.0.co;2-e

✦ Synopsis

This paper presents methods for modeling and assisting students understanding of causal relationships between physical quantities based on comparative reasoning. Our tutoring system discusses causalities in an object system with the student by choosing dialogue strategies according to the students understanding state. This state is represented by the causal network and table. Dialogue strategies are characterized by the following four elements of dialogue: control of topic, progress of dialogue, granularity of dialogue, and style of utterance. This paper also presents a method of deepening the students understanding of the object system by comparing it with a similar system, which is generated by partitioning or simplifying the original system. The partitioned system has a causality different from that of the original system, and the simplified system has a causality similar to that of the original system.