Towards Smarter Intelligent Tutoring Systems: A Proposal for the Inclusion of Enthymemes in their Design
Sid Ansari and Edward R. Sykes
Enthymemes are a manner of presenting a deductive argument. A deductive argument consists of three elements: A major premise (e.g., All men are mortal.), a minor premise (e.g., Aristotle is a man.), and a conclusion (i.e., Therefore, Aristotle is mortal.). An enthymeme is a truncated deductive argument; one of the members is left unstated. From a formal point of view, there are three ways to create an enthymeme: 1. conclusion + major premise: Aristotle is mortal because all men are mortal. 2. conclusion + minor premise: Aristotle is mortal because he is a man. 3. major premise + minor premise: All men are mortal and Aristotle is a man. In this paper we argue for the use of enthymemes in programming tutors and how the framework of an ITS could benefit greatly by incorporating enthymemes in the transfer of knowledge to the interactive users of such systems.
Keywords: Enthymemes, programming tutors, e-Learning, Intelligent Tutoring Systems