QUIZ, a distributed intelligent tutoring system

Abstract

QUIZ is a Distributed Intelligent Tutoring System for learning bridge bidding. A set of generic tasks is distributed among four specialists (a tutor, a problem solver, an explainer and a problem generator), who perform their tasks in parallel. These agents are heterogeneous. They own a private working memory and communicate by asynchronous messages passing. Increasing flexibility is a key point in improving the pedagogical capacities of ITS. The strategic level of flexibility results from the determination of the curriculum, the choice of the pedagogical strategy and the degree of expertise used in the problem solver. The choices made at this level must be based mainly upon the student model. The tactical level of flexibility results from the choice of exercise, the advising, the corrections and the explanations. In QUIZ, the pedagogical actions are gathered and sequenced by means of plans, which are chosen by metarules and dynamically assembled from pieces that are memorized in libraries.