Problem-Solving Knowledge Mining from Users' Actions in an Intelligent Tutoring System

In an intelligent tutoring system (ITS), the domain expert should provide relevant domain knowledge to the tutor so that it will be able to guide the learner during problem solving. However, in several domains, this knowledge is not predetermined and should be captured or learned from expert users as well as intermediate and novice users. Our hypothesis is that, knowledge discovery (KD) techniques can help to build this domain intelligence in ITS. This paper proposes a framework to capture problem-solving knowledge using a promising approach of data and knowledge discovery based on a combination of sequential pattern mining and association rules discovery techniques. The framework has been implemented and is used to discover new meta knowledge and rules in a given domain which then extend domain knowledge and serve as problem space allowing the intelligent tutoring system to guide learners in problem-solving situations. Preliminary experiments have been conducted using the framework as an alternative to a path-planning problem solver in CanadarmTutor.