Student Modelling in an Intelligent Tutoring System for the Passive Voice of English Language

This paper describes an intelligent multimedia tutoring system for the passive voice of the English grammar. The system may be used to present theoretical issues about the passive voice and to provide exercises that the student may solve. The main focus of the tutor is on the student's error diagnosis process, which is performed by the student modelling component. When the student types the solution to an exercise, the system examines the correctness of the answer. If the student's answer has been erroneous it attempts to diagnose the underlying misconception of the mistake. In order to provide individualised help, the system holds a profile for every student, the long term student model. The student’s progress and his/her usual mistakes are recorded to this long term student model. This kind of information is used for the individualised error diagnosis of the student in subsequent sessions. In addition, the information stored about the student can also be used for the resolution of an arising ambiguity, as to what the underlying cause of a student error has been.