Phenomenographic Research and the Design of Diagnostic Strategies for Adaptive Tutoring Systems

Adaptive tutoring systems require explicit information about the forms of misconception students have within the topic being taught. Phenomenographic research, which uses qualitative interview data to describe the “outcome space” for learning a specific topic, can provide that level of detail needed. The paper gives examples of this and argues that this approach is more tractable than student modelling and leads to a system architecture that combines knowledge of the student with the interactive interface to define a diagnostic strategy for an adaptive, though not intelligent tutoring system.