Rapid Authoring of Intelligent Tutors for Real-World and Experimental Use

Authoring tools for intelligent tutoring systems are especially valuable if they not only provide a rich set of options for the efficient authoring of tutoring systems but also support controlled experiments in which the added educational value of new tutor features is evaluated. The cognitive tutor authoring tools (CTAT) provide both. Using CTAT, real-world "example-tracing tutors" can be created without programming. CTAT also provides various kinds of support for controlled experiments, such as administration of different experimental treatments, logging, and data analysis. We present two case studies in which example-tracing tutors created with CTAT were used in classroom experiments. The case studies illustrate a number of new features in CTAT: use of Macromedia Flash MX 2004 for creating tutor interfaces, extensions to the example-tracing engine that allow for more flexible tutors, a mass production facility for more efficient template-based authoring, and support for controlled experiments