Expert Tutors Feedback Is Immediate, Direct, and Discriminating

1 Feedback is critical in both human and computer tutoring because it has directive, facilitative, and motivational functions. An understanding of the feedback strategies of expert human tutors is essential for ITSs that aspire to model such tutors. Although previous research suggests that expert tutors provide indirect and delayed feedback, methodological concerns limit the generalizability of these findings. In order to alleviate some of these methodological concerns, we conducted a fine-grained analysis of the feedback strategies of 10 expert tutors across 50 sessions. We analyzed the likelihood that tutors provide positive, negative, and neutral feedback immediately following students’ correct, partially-correct, error-ridden, vague, or no answers. Our results support the conclusion that expert tutors feedback is direct, immediate, discriminating, and largely domain independent. We discuss the implication of our results for the development of an ITS that aspires to model expert tutors.