Student-Teacher: The Learning Machine as an Instructional Device

This article presents QUERIOUS, an educational tool based on expert system technology, functional analysis techniques, and Socratic method. Using a knowledge acquisition device originally developed to allow specialists to impart their knowledge to expert systems, our tool asks students questions, leads them through functional analysis of a problem and, in effect, induces them to teach the system their solution strategy. An existing prototype is described, and a proposal for further development is presented.