Designing an intelligent tutoring system in the domain of formal languages

Abstract

The paper describes design of an intelligent tutoring system called FLUTE. The system has been recently developed in order to help students learn concepts from the domain of formal languages and automata. The basic idea of the FLUTE system is a systematic introduction of students into the system's domain, in accordance with both the logical structure of the domain and individual background knowledge and learning capabilities of each student. The main goal of the paper is to illustrate important design decisions and implementation details that are relevant even beyond the FLUTE system itself. The system is presented in the paper primarily from the pedagogical and design perspectives.