Computer Science 691O - S-Tools/Explanatory&TutorSystm

This seminar examines recent work in explanatory and tutoring systems. Participants study artificial intelligence in education, a young field that explores theories about learning, and explores how to build software that delivers differential teaching as it adapt its response to student needs and domain knowledge. Such software supports people who work alone or in collaborative inquiry, students who question their own knowledge, and students who rapidly access and integrate global information. This course describes how to build these tutors and how to produce the best possible learning environment, whether for classroom instruction or lifelong learning. The objective of the course is to stimulate awareness of research issues and to promote sound analytic and design skills as they pertain to building knowledge representations and control strategies. Specific topics include collaboration, inquiry, dialogue systems, machine learning, simulators, authoring tools and user models. The course is appropriate for students from many disciplines (computer science, linguistics, education, and psychology), researchers, and practitioners from academia, industry, and government. No programming is required. Students read and critique tools, methods, and ideas, learn how artificial intelligence is applied (e.g., vision, natural language), and study the complexity of human learning through advances in cognitive science.

Open to Graduate students only. SEATS ARE RESERVED FOR MA EDUC MAJORS. STUDENTS NEEDING SPECIAL PERMISSION MUST REQUEST OVERRIDES VIA THE ON-LINE FORM: https://www.cics.umass.edu/overrides.