Toward Automatic Hint Generation for Logic Proof Tutoring Using Historical Student Data

  • Authors:

  • Tiffany Barnes;John Stamper

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Science Department, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, USA NC 28223;Computer Science Department, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, USA NC 28223

  • Venue:
  • ITS '08 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We have proposed a novel application of Markov decision processes (MDPs), a reinforcement learning technique, to automatically generate hints for an intelligent tutor that learns. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by extracting MDPs from four semesters of student solutions in a logic proof tutor, and calculating the probability that we will be able to generate hints at any point in a given problem. Our results indicate that extracted MDPs and our proposed hint-generating functions will be able to provide hints over 80% of the time. Our results also indicate that we can provide valuable tradeoffs between hint specificity and the amount of data used to create an MDP.