An Intelligent Tutoring System(ITS) for Tactical Training Based on Ontology

In order to enhance tank tactical training in Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE), an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is developed and provides real-time automatic coaching. The ITS is designed according to pedagogy of scaffolding. The coaching fades out gradually while the trainee making progress. The coaching content depends not only on previous performance, but also on current performance. To realize such ITS, Concept-based Knowledge Tree (CKT), an ontology tool, is used to represent the tactical knowledge and teaching strategy knowledge. Task nodes in the knowledge tree have attributes and behaviors. The behaviors consist of scheduling member-tasks, demonstrating how to perform task, giving hints and etc. Behavior is represented by rules. When a task is started, its rules begin to be executed repeatedly. The first task is started according to training content. Other tasks, as components of the first task, are started by rules in task that has already started. This composable behavior modeling method is capable of representing complex tactical behavior. To make scaffolding teaching strategy both autonomous and configurable, an ontology pattern is designed. Each task ontology node has several child nodes, which are used to represent knowledge about the same task but with different types of coaching. A prototype system is developed. It shows that the scaffolding automatically generated by computer is helpful for tank tactical training.