Towards the Development of a Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT)

Abstract

This workshop provides the AIED community with an in-depth exploration of the Army Research Laboratory’s effort to develop tools, methods and standards for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) as part of their Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) research project. GIFT is a modular, service-oriented architecture developed to address authoring, instructional strategies, and analysis constraints currently limiting the use and reuse of ITS today. Such constraints include high development costs; lack of standards; and inadequate adaptability to support tailored needs of the learner. GIFT’s three primary objectives are to provide: (1) authoring tools for developing new ITS, ITS components (e.g., learner models, pedagogical models, user interfaces, sensor interfaces), tools, and methods based on authoring standards that support reuse and leverage external training environments; (2) an instructional manager that encompasses best tutoring principles, strategies, and tactics for use in ITS; and (3) an experimental testbed for analyzing the effect of ITS components, tools, and methods. GIFT is based on a learner-centric approach with the goal of improving linkages in the adaptive tutoring learning effect chain in Figure 1.