| A novel Web-based intelligent tutoring system, called Arthur, is developed in this work. This system provides adaptive instruction between various instruction methods that are created by expert tutors. Intelligent tutoring systems are forms of expert systems, where each tutor is an expert in the field and has a different instruction style. Arthur makes use of learning styles theory (Dune 1978) and mastery learning (Bloom 1976), from education, and case-based reasoning (Kolodner 1993), from artificial intelligence, to bring this new style of asynchronous instruction to the World Wide Web. Case-based reasoning is used to adaptively change instruction methods when corrective instruction is necessary. Unlike the traditional tutoring environment or classroom environment where there is a one-to-one relationship or one-to-many relationship between the tutor and student or students, Arthur provides a many-to-one relationship between the tutors and student. Imagine taking a course where the student has an unlimited number of tutors available. The purpose of this system is to provide effective instruction via the Web in search of “A Significant Difference” (Russell 1999) in learner outcomes. Chapter 1 gives an introduction to this research. Chapter 2 reviews previous contributions through other Web-based systems that consider learning style as part of their design. Chapter 3 will focus on Arthur's design and explain “What is Arthur?” Chapter 4 discusses the experiment and the experiment results. Finally, Chapter 5 will summarize Arthur and its contributions. |
