COSC420-20S1 (C) Semester One 2020

Intelligent Tutoring Systems

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 17 February 2020
End Date: Sunday, 21 June 2020
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 28 February 2020
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 29 May 2020

Description

This course addresses the use of artificial intelligence to create computer-based intelligent tutoring systems.

This course addresses the use of Artificial Intelligence to create computer-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). Students will learn theoretical and data-driven methods for creating ITSs. ITSs have been demonstrated to dramatically enhance student learning in many domains, including, to name a few, mathematics, computer science, medicine, biology and engineering. In addition to discussion and readings about methods and models of problem solving, learning, and tutor design, the course will have a "learning by doing" component.

Learning Outcomes

  • After successful completion of this course, students will be able to
  • understand key ideas in the area of Artificial Intelligence in Education
  • understand the basics of psychology of learning
  • critically assess approaches to student modelling in ITSs
  • develop constraints and production rules for use in ITSs
  • develop small-scale constraint-based tutors
  • understand current research topics in the area of Artificial Intelligence in Education

Prerequisites

Subject to approval of the Head of Department.

Course Coordinator

Tanja Mitrovic

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Assignment One 06 Mar 2020
Assignment Two 29 Apr 2020
Assignment Three 26 May 2020
Review of Papers and Participation
Final Exam


Review of selected papers and participation (10%): You will be assigned some papers to read, and will need to write a short review (one paragraph) and email it to the lecturer at least one hour before the lecture. Your review may contain questions about the paper, or a description of the most important point of the paper. You will also participate in class discussion on these papers.
No assignments will be accepted after the drop dead date (i.e. a week after the assignment is due). The penalty for the late submission of an assignment will be an absolute deduction of 15% of the maximum possible mark.
In order to pass a course you must meet two requirements:
a) The university has adopted a common scale for converting marks to grades. According to this scale, an average mark of 50% is sufficient to pass the course (i.e. to achieve a C-), with an average mark of 55% a C grade is achieved and so forth. We apply this conversion scale to the average marks students achieve over all assessment items.
b) You must achieve an average mark of at least 45% on invigilated assessment items.
Marks are sometimes scaled to achieve consistency between courses from year to year.

Updated Semester One 2020 assessment deadlines and details will be available once finalised.

Textbooks / Resources

Course notes will be handed out, as well as some papers.

Additional Course Outline Information

Grade moderation

The Computer Science department's grading policy states that in order to pass a course you must meet two requirements:
1. You must achieve an average grade of at least 50% over all assessment items.
2. You must achieve an average mark of at least 45% on invigilated assessment items.
If you satisfy both these criteria, your grade will be determined by the following University- wide scale for converting marks to grades: an average mark of 50% is sufficient for a C- grade, an average mark of 55% earns a C grade, 60% earns a B- grade and so forth. However if you do not satisfy both the passing criteria you will be given either a D or E grade depending on marks. Marks are sometimes scaled to achieve consistency between courses from year to year.

Students may apply for special consideration if their performance in an assessment is affected by extenuating circumstances beyond their control.

Applications for special consideration should be submitted via the Examinations Office website within five days of the assessment.

Where an extension may be granted for an assessment, this will be decided by direct application to the Department and an application to the Examinations Office may not be required.

Special consideration is not available for items worth less than 10% of the course.

Students prevented by extenuating circumstances from completing the course after the final date for withdrawing, may apply for special consideration for late discontinuation of the course. Applications must be submitted to the Examinations Office within five days of the end of the main examination period for the semester.

Tentative lecture schedule

Week / Lecture topic
1   Psychology of learning, Computers in education
2   Student Modeling
3   Model/Knowledge tracing
4   Constraint-based Modeling, Think-aloud protocol
5   SQL-Tutor
6   EER-Tutor, Comparing model-tracing tutors to constraint-based tutors
7   Evaluation of ITSs
8   Authoring tools, ASPIRE
9   Pedagogical module, Third generation tutors (metacognition and affect)
10  CSCL, OLM, Eye Tracking
11  Affective student modelling, AR + ITS
12  Presentations and Course review

Recommended Preparation

COSC367

Important Documents

Notices about this course will be posted to the course forum in the Learn system (learn.canterbury.ac.nz).  CSSE students will also be made members of a class called "CSSE Notices", where general notices will be posted that apply to all classes (such as information about building access or job opportunities).


There are several important documents available online about departmental regulations, policies and guidelines at the following site.  We expect all students to be familiar with these. Policies

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,022.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Computer Science and Software Engineering .

All COSC420 Occurrences

  • COSC420-20S1 (C) Semester One 2020