PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF A NEGOTIABLE STUDENT MODEL IN A CONSTRAINT-BASED ITS

Abstract

Previous research on adaptive educational systems has shown that allowing the student to view their student model is useful in the learning process. Open student models help support meta-cognitive processes, such as self-assessment and reflection, and at the same time increase the student’s trust in the system. Negotiable student models take this a step further, and allow students to negotiate and potentially modify their model. Very few negotiable student models have been implemented, and only in relatively simple sys- tems, not integrated into a complex Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Therefore, it is not clearly known whether negotiable student models pose a significant advantage over simpler open student models. This research implements a basic negotiable student model into a version of a complex and internationally deployed ITS. Subjective evaluation is performed, and shows promising results. Participants felt the negotiable student model was both useful for learning, and enjoyable to use. With a few improvements, this nego- tiable student model implementation could be used in a wide-scale objective analysis to help determine the usefulness of negotiable student models.