Intellectual ability planning for intelligent tutoring system in computer science engineering education abstract

The development of a hierarchical knowledge map to be used with an intelligent questioning system is described in detail in this paper. The purpose of the intelligent questioning system is to improve the educational process in engineering courses by allowing students to learn more in less time, to understand more deeply, and to enjoy their learning experience. Key elements of this system are a question model and an adaptive question management system that uses a hierarchical knowledge map to direct the learning process based on the student's degree of understanding of individual or grouped concepts. Although there are several online computer based questioning systems, they typically have no built-in help, no guidance if questions are answered incorrectly, no method for selecting questions based on the student's needs, and no comprehensive monitoring of a student's progress through a knowledge map of the course and the overall curriculum. The knowledge map is a formal representation of the knowledge to be imparted to students in a program of study. In addition, the knowledge map has sufficient structure to capture a model of each student's progression. It provides a graphical map of the concepts that a student has learned and the degree of understanding for each concept.