An Intelligent Tutor for Kinetic System Modeling

Qualitative reasoning is an effective method for intelligent tutoring systems. It can provides causal explanation of behavior that cannot be achieved by numerical simulation. The causal explanation is obtained based on a set of differential equations. If a student doesn’t understand the explanation, we should explain the reason why the equations hold. Qualitative reasoning cannot answer this question because the equations are predefined for qualitative reasoning mechanisms. This is a problem of system modeling. In order to explain why equations or relations of system parameters hold, a tutoring system is required ability to derive the relations from a system structure. This paper proposes a method of deriving relationship among forces and elements of a given kinetic systems. The relations are represented by a network called causal relation model, which shows causes of force occurrences. Because the derivation method is based on human intuition, it provides a natural explanation for a student. A tutoring system based on the causal relation model is also presented in this paper. In order to brush up student’s ability to model kinetic systems, the tutor asks the student to illustrate forces that act in a given system. Student’s interpretation of the system is modeled by a network called student’s kinetic model, which has the same structure as the causal relation model. The tutor diagnoses the student by comparing the causal relation model and the student’s kinetic model to give adaptable advice to the student.