Previous research on adaptive educational systems has shown that allowing the student to view their student model is useful in the learning process. Open student models help support meta-cognitive processes, such as self-assessment and reflection, and at the same time increase the student's trust in the system. Negotiable student models take this a step further, and allow students to negotiate and potentially modify their model. Very few negotiable student models have been implemented, and only in relatively simple systems, not integrated into a complex Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Therefore, it is not clearly known whether negotiable student models pose a significant advantage over simpler open student models. This research implements a basic negotiable student model into a version of a complex and internationally deployed ITS. Subjective evaluation is performed, and shows promising results. Participants felt the negotiable student model was both useful for learning, and enjoyable to use. With a few improvements, this negotiable student model implementation could be used in a wide-scale objective analysis to help determine the usefulness of negotiable student models.
['David Thomson', 'Antonija Mitrovic']
PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF A NEGOTIABLE STUDENT MODEL IN A CONSTRAINT-BASED ITS