Work in progress - bringing SOCRATES into computer-assisted instruction

SOCRATES (Student Oriented Creative Resource for the Assessment and Teaching of Engineering Skills) will be an automated computer-based system for simulating the Socratic Method of learning in the subject area of Probability and Statistics. The goal is for the student to be an active partner in the learning process using directed self-reflections. In SOCRATES, a knowledge space is created from data gathered from expert practitioners and students. An automatic question poser is then used to lead students through the knowledge space by presenting them with additional questions. We describe several methods for gathering data from domain experts (instructors and students). This dataset is then analyzed to produce a basis set of generic questions and actions that appear commonly within the tree structure of instructor responses. These various sources of data are combined and analyzed to identify prerequisite relationships and dependencies between the topics. We also show how the collected data can be used to guide an automated question poser. Student interactions with the system can be monitored to develop a model of how students learn.