A pedagogical framework for integrating individual learning style into an intelligent tutoring system

An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) provides individualized help based on an individual student profile maintained by the system. An ITS maintains a student model which includes each student's problem solving history and uses this student model to individualize the tutoring content and process. ITSs adapt to individual students by identifying gaps in their knowledge and presenting them with content to fill in these gaps. Even though these systems are very good at identifying gaps and selecting content to fill them; however, most of them do not address one important aspect of the learning process: the learning style of a student. Learning styles are modes of perception and cognition with which individuals prefer to learn. Some students are visual learners; some are auditory learners; others learn best through hands-on activity (tactile or kinesthetic learning). The focus of this research is to integrate the results of learning style research into the pedagogical module of an ITS by creating a learning style based pedagogical framework that would generate feedback that is specific to the learner. This integration of individual learning styles will help an ITS become more adapted to the learner by presenting information in the form best suited to his or her needs. This framework has been implemented in the pedagogical module of DesignFirst-ITS, which helps students learn object-oriented design. This pedagogical module assists the students in two modes: the advice/hint mode, which provides real time feedback in the forms of scaffolds as the student works on his/her design solution, and the lesson/tutorial mode, which provides detailed explanations about specific concepts.