OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you Grade

Despite strong evidence that dialog-based intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) can increase learning gains, few courses include these tutors. In this research, we posit that existing dialog-based tutoring systems are not widely used because they are too complex and unfamiliar for a typical teacher to...

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Main Authors: Benjamin D Nye, Rushit Sanghrajka, Vinit Bodhwani, Martin Acob, Daniel Budziwojski, Kayla Carr, Larry Kirshner, William R Swartout
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: LibraryPress@UF 2021-04-01
Series:Proceedings of the International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.flvc.org/FLAIRS/article/view/128576
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author Benjamin D Nye
Rushit Sanghrajka
Vinit Bodhwani
Martin Acob
Daniel Budziwojski
Kayla Carr
Larry Kirshner
William R Swartout
author_facet Benjamin D Nye
Rushit Sanghrajka
Vinit Bodhwani
Martin Acob
Daniel Budziwojski
Kayla Carr
Larry Kirshner
William R Swartout
author_sort Benjamin D Nye
collection DOAJ
description Despite strong evidence that dialog-based intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) can increase learning gains, few courses include these tutors. In this research, we posit that existing dialog-based tutoring systems are not widely used because they are too complex and unfamiliar for a typical teacher to adapt or augment. OpenTutor is an open-source research project intended to scale up dialog-based tutoring by enabling ordinary teachers to rapidly author and improve dialog-based ITS, where authoring is presented through familiar tasks such as assessment item creation and grading. Formative usability results from a set of five non-CS educators are presented, which indicate that the OpenTutor system was relatively easy to use but that teachers would closely consider the cost benefit for time vs. student outcomes. Specifically, while OpenTutor grading was faster than expected, teachers reported that they would only spend any additional time (compared to a multiple choice) if the content required deeper learning. To decrease time to train answer classifiers, OpenTutor is investigating ways to reduce cold-start problems for tutoring dialogs.
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series Proceedings of the International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference
spelling doaj-art-2bb504f86df946688f25b488e92112aa2025-08-20T01:52:19ZengLibraryPress@UFProceedings of the International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference2334-07542334-07622021-04-013410.32473/flairs.v34i1.12857662965OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you GradeBenjamin D Nye0Rushit Sanghrajka1Vinit Bodhwani2Martin Acob3Daniel Budziwojski4Kayla Carr5Larry Kirshner6William R Swartout7University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of UtahUniversity of Southern CaliforniaCalifornia State University, SacramentoUniversity of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaDespite strong evidence that dialog-based intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) can increase learning gains, few courses include these tutors. In this research, we posit that existing dialog-based tutoring systems are not widely used because they are too complex and unfamiliar for a typical teacher to adapt or augment. OpenTutor is an open-source research project intended to scale up dialog-based tutoring by enabling ordinary teachers to rapidly author and improve dialog-based ITS, where authoring is presented through familiar tasks such as assessment item creation and grading. Formative usability results from a set of five non-CS educators are presented, which indicate that the OpenTutor system was relatively easy to use but that teachers would closely consider the cost benefit for time vs. student outcomes. Specifically, while OpenTutor grading was faster than expected, teachers reported that they would only spend any additional time (compared to a multiple choice) if the content required deeper learning. To decrease time to train answer classifiers, OpenTutor is investigating ways to reduce cold-start problems for tutoring dialogs.https://journals.flvc.org/FLAIRS/article/view/128576intelligent tutoring systemsnatural language processingauthoring toolsonline learningusability
spellingShingle Benjamin D Nye
Rushit Sanghrajka
Vinit Bodhwani
Martin Acob
Daniel Budziwojski
Kayla Carr
Larry Kirshner
William R Swartout
OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you Grade
Proceedings of the International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference
intelligent tutoring systems
natural language processing
authoring tools
online learning
usability
title OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you Grade
title_full OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you Grade
title_fullStr OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you Grade
title_full_unstemmed OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you Grade
title_short OpenTutor: Designing a Rapid-Authored Tutor that Learns as you Grade
title_sort opentutor designing a rapid authored tutor that learns as you grade
topic intelligent tutoring systems
natural language processing
authoring tools
online learning
usability
url https://journals.flvc.org/FLAIRS/article/view/128576
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