StaticsTutor: Free Body Diagram Tutor for Problem Framing

While intelligent tutoring systems have been designed to teach free-body diagrams, existing software often forces students to define variables and equations that may not be necessary for conceptual understanding during the problem framing stage. StaticsTutor was developed to analyze solutions from a student-drawn diagram and recognize misconceptions at the earliest stages of problem framing, without requiring numerical force values or the need to provide equilibrium equations. Preliminary results with 81 undergraduates showed that it detects several frequent misconceptions in statics and that students are interested in using it, though they have suggestions for improvement. This research offers insights in the development of a diagram-based tutor to help problem framing, which can be generalized to tutors for other forms of diagrams.

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