The application of ID3 in Intelligent Tutoring
The ID3 algorithm has been combined with DPF (Diagnostic Path Finder) in the Automated Cognitive Modeler (Langley et al 1984). This is a system for generating student models and has been used in the domain of arithmetic subtraction.
ACM first determines a sequence of operators that lead to a student’s answer to a problem using DPF. An operator on the student’s solution path is labelled positive and those one step away from the solution path labelled negative. ACM then uses a version of ID3 to infer the conditions under which the student uses the operators and updates a student model with this information.
Effectively machine learning is being used here to generate a bug library so removing the need to manually enumerate the bugs. However, the computational complexity of the machine learning can negate these benefits.
Authored by Serengul Smith
E-mail to:
serengul1@mdx.ac.uk
School of Computing Science Middlesex University
Revised: September 1998