Assistant Tools for Teaching FOL to CF Conversion

The FOLtoCF system is an interactive web-based system for learning to convert first order logic (FOL) formulas into Clause Form (CF). FOL to CF conversion is a fundamental part of using FOL for making inferences. In this paper, we present two tutor assistant tools integrated with that system. The first, called tutoring manager, helps the tutor to manage the teaching material and monitor the progress of students. It helps tutors to investigate students’ answers and errors made by providing useful statistics. Also, it gives a graphical view of them for an easier understanding of difficulties that students face. The second tool, the difficulty estimating expert system, aims at helping tutors in determining the difficulty level of a formula’s conversion process. This is based on the complexity of the FOL formula. Experimental results show that the difficulty estimating system is quite successful.