A conceptual framework for knowledge-based critic systems

The critiquing paradigm is one approach to instantiating the concept of intelligent support systems. Knowledge-based systems that use the cri tiquing approach can support numerous application domains. including: progranuning. design and decision making. Critiquing is an alternative to expert systems that can support cooperative problem solving and aid user learning in the application domain. As a result of empirical studies we identified the requirements for critic systems. We have developed several knowledge-based critics to instantiate these ideas and used them to identify new issues and theory. Our systems have been revised to include approaches to addressing these issues. As a result of these implementations we have developed a general architecture for knowledge-based critics that fully support cooperative problem solving. We describe the current extension of one of our systems designed to incorporate these findings.