AuthorIT & TutorIT: An Intelligent Tutor Authoring & Delivery System You Can Use
Joseph M. Scandura
Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) have a long history, almost as long as the Structural Learning Theory (initially in Scandura, 1971). Although well funded for many years, neither ITS nor contemporary successors based on BIG DATA (e.g., Knewton) come close to modeling the processes used by good human tutors. AuthorIT & TutorIT rest on a fundamentally different theoretical foundation designed from inceptions explicitly with this in mind. After summarizing approaches, this paper focuses on answering four basic questions that good human tutors must ask, explicitly or implicitly. It shows how AuthorIT authoring and TutorIT delivery technologies have made it possible in a highly cost effective manner to build a broad variety of TutorIT tutorials that interact with students as might a good human tutor. Those interested in field testing or further research are encouraged to contact the author.