Emotionally Intelligent Tutoring Systems (EITS)

It is well-known that emotions have a strong influence on a person’s cognitive abilities, a fact which can be used by a tutor to improve a student’s learning capacities. Conditions are that the tutor knows the current emotional state of the learner as well as the emotional impact of certain actions taken and, finally, how the student’s learning capacities depend on his emotions. In this article, we propose the concept of an Emotionally Intelligent Tutoring System (EITS) and make a step towards its practical realization: We develop a tool allowing an Intelligent Tutoring System for improving a learner’s capacities by actively influencing his emotions. More specifically, we combine Case-Based Reasoning methods with graph knowledge representation for modeling and predicting efficiently a learner’s emotional reaction to specific situations which can occur during a learning lesson, with the final objective of promoting any particular users learning capacities. 1. Motivation and Introduction 1.1 Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence is a form of intelligence providing the capacity to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, and to use it to guide one's thinking and actions. The concept of emotional intelligence is based on to the relation between “thinking” and “feeling”. Indeed, emotions are narrowly linked to the cognitive process. Without emotions, we are unable to make even the simplest decision (Damasio 1995). Moreover, some strong emotions, like anger or anxiety, can prevent us from concentrating on our every day tasks (Goleman 1997). People who have positive emotions will think in a more creative, expansive, and divergent way. On the other hand, negative emotions will more likely lead to a conservative, linear, and sequential thought process (Lisetti & Schiano 2000). In particular, being emotionally intelligent means to act in a way that takes into account someone’s emotions in order to improve his cognitive abilities. In schools, teachers should be emotionally intelligent to improve students learning capacities. Similarly, Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) should integrate emotional intelligence for improving the learner’s performance. 1.2 Emotionally Intelligent Tutoring