AutoTutor: A simulation of a human tutor

AutoTutor is a computer tutor that simulates the discourse patterns and pedagogical strategies of a typical human tutor. AutoTutor is designed to assist college students in learning the fundamentals of hardware, operating systems, and the Internet in an introductory computer literacy course. Most tutors in school systems are not highly trained in tutoring techniques and have only a modest expertise on the tutoring topic, but they are surprisingly effective in producing learning gains in students. We have dissected the discourse and pedagogical strategies these unskilled tutors exhibit by analyzing approximately 100 hours of naturalistic tutoring sessions. These mechanisms are implemented in AutoTutor. AutoTutor presents questions and problems from a curriculum script, attempts to comprehend learner contributions that are entered by keyboard, formulates dialog moves that are sensitive to the learner's contributions (such as short feedback, pumps, prompts, elaborations, corrections, and hints), and delivers the dialog moves with a talking head. AutoTutor has seven modules: a curriculum script, language extraction, speech act classification, latent semantic analysis, topic selection, dialog move generation, and a talking head.

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