Computer tutoring has come a long way, baby

You know how new inventions are always kind of clunky at first - think telephones, think automobiles - but then, once people see the potential and start tweaking them, they get better and better? Well, this process has been at work in the sphere of computer tutoring. I suspect that many of us are still thinking of machine tutoring in terms of its early Model T versions, but in fact these programs have got better and better. This blog posting discusses a recent study that suggests that certain types of computer programs are now approaching human tutoring effectiveness. 

The study categorizes tutoring as follows: “[The study] splits machine and human tutoring research along a spectrum of “grain-size” for the interaction.Answer-based tutors provide feedback and guidance after a student has worked through a problem and selected an answer, based on that answer. Step-based tutors break a solution to a problem or task into steps, and follow those steps with students, providing feedback around each step in the problem.Substep based tutors work within the steps – e.g., checking if students are familiar with the concepts or actions that make up a step before they get started working on that step, and intervening if they don’t.Human tutoring is the most finely-grain sized approach of all, of course.”

The study finds that “it looks like typical answer-based tutoring systems average an effect size of around 0.35 standard deviation units (real progress by itself), while all three of step-based, substep-based, and human tutoring seem to cluster around an effect size of 0.75 standard deviation units”.

The article mentions two good computer-tutoring systems that I hadn’t heard of: Carnegie Learning and ALEX.

To me, the most exciting aspect of these technological advances is summed up here: “Machine-tutoring systems change the economics for student help.  While there’s a lot more up-front cost involved, the delivery cost per student goes way down.  This can shift investment in people resources (which do not have to go down unless you want/need it to go down) to other parts of the learning puzzle – the most intractable learning situations, motivation issues, diagnostic and group activities (where evidence shows those latter to pay off well), etc.”

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