Diagnosing self-efficacy in intelligent tutoring systems: an empirical study

  • Authors:
  • Scott W. McQuiggan;James C. Lester

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC;Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

  • Venue:
  • ITS'06 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Self-efficacy is an individual's belief about her ability to perform well in a given situation. Because self-efficacious students are effective learners, endowing intelligent tutoring systems with the ability to diagnose self-efficacy could lead to improved pedagogy. Self-efficacy is influenced by (and influences) affective state. Thus, physiological data might be used to predict a students' level of self-efficacy. This paper investigates an inductive approach to automatically constructing models of self-efficacy that can be used at runtime to inform pedagogical decisions. In an empirical study, two families of self-efficacy models were induced: a static model, learned solely from pre-test (non-intrusively collected) data, and a dynamic model, learned from both pre-test data as well as runtime physiological data collected with a biofeedback apparatus. The resulting static model is able to predict students' real-time levels of self-efficacy with reasonable accuracy, while the physiologically informed dynamic model is even more accurate.