Abstract
The concept of mastery learning is powerful: rather than a fixed number of practices, students continue to practice a skill until they have mastered it. However, an implicit assumption in this formulation is that students are capable of mastering the skill. Such an assumption is crucial in computer tutors, as their repertoire of teaching actions may not be as effective as commonly believed. What if a student lacks sufficient knowledge to solve problems involving the skill, and the computer tutor is not capable of providing sufficient instruction? This paper introduces the concept of “wheel-spinning;” that is, students who do not succeed in mastering a skill in a timely manner. We show that if a student does not master a skill in ASSISTments or the Cognitive Tutor quickly, the student is likely to struggle and will probably never master the skill. We discuss connections between such lack of learning and negative student behaviors such as gaming and disengagement, and discuss alterations to ITS design to overcome this issue.
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Beck, J.E., Gong, Y. (2013). Wheel-Spinning: Students Who Fail to Master a Skill. In: Lane, H.C., Yacef, K., Mostow, J., Pavlik, P. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7926. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39112-5_44
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39112-5_44
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39111-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39112-5
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