Plan Recognition in a Situational

If a plan recognition capability is to be incorporated into an eeective learning environment, it must be designed with the following issues in mind: How much information is required about the per-son's plan, and when must the information be available? How much eeort should be devoted to monitoring the person's actions, as opposed to monitoring the environment in which those actions are carried out? To what extent is the system justiied in inferring intentions underlying observed actions? This paper argues that for domains where the learners interact with dynamic environments, the proper role of plan recognition is quite limited. The system must monitor the state of the environment as well as the learner's actions, and to some extent environment monitoring can take the place of plan recognition. Plan recognition eeort is needed only at points where the tutoring system must interact with the student to provide assistance. It should not assume that each action is part of a premeditated, conscious plan. These considerations have led to the development of an approach to plan recognition called Situated Plan At-tribution (SPA) which is being employed by our group in various interactive learning environments.