A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems on college students' academic learning

© 2013 American Psychological Association.This meta-analysis synthesizes research on the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) for college students. Thirty-five reports were found containing 39 studies assessing the effectiveness of 22 types of ITS in higher education settings. Most frequently studied were AutoTutor, Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces, eXtended Tutor-Expert System, and Web Interface for Statistics Education. Major findings include (a) Overall, ITS had a moderate positive effect on college students' academic learning (g = .32 to g = .37); (b) ITS were less effective than human tutoring, but they outperformed all other instruction methods and learning activities, including traditional classroom instruction, reading printed text or computerized materials, computer-assisted instruction, laboratory or homework assignments, and no-treatment control; (c) ITS's effectiveness did not significantly differ by different ITS, subject domain, or the manner or degree of their involvement in instruction and learning; and (d) effectiveness in earlier studies appeared to be significantly greater than that in more recent studies. In addition, there is some evidence suggesting the importance of teachers and pedagogy in ITS-assisted learning.

How a different look at latency can help to develop novel diagnostics and vaccines against tuberculosis.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is one of the most successful human pathogens. It kills every year approximately 1.5 - 2 million people, and at present a third of the human population is estimated to be infected. Fortunately, only a relatively small proportion of the infected individuals will progress to active disease, and most will maintain a latent infection. Although a latent infection is clinically silent and not contagious, it can reactivate to cause highly contagious pulmonary tuberculosis, the most prevalent form of the disease in adults. Therefore, a thorough understanding of latency and reactivation may help to develop novel control strategies against tuberculosis. The most widely held view is that the mycobacteria are imprisoned in granulomatous structures during latency, where they can survive in a non-replicating, dormant form until reactivation occurs. However, there is no hard data to sustain that the reactivating mycobacteria are indeed those that laid dormant within the granulomas. In this review an alternative model, based on evidence from early studies, as well as recent reports is presented, in which the latent mycobacteria reside outside granulomas, within non-macrophage cell types throughout the infected body. Potential implications for new diagnostic and vaccine design are discussed.

The mycobacterial heparin-binding hemagglutinin, virulence factor and antigen useful for diagnostics and vaccine development.

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

SMARTFIRE: an intelligent CFD-based fire model

This paper describes a project aimed at making Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based fire simulation accessible to members of the fire safety engineering community. Over the past few years, the practise of CFD based fire simulation has begun the transition from the confines of the research laboratory to the desk of the fire safety engineer. To a certain extent, this move has been driven by the demands of performance based building codes. However, while CFD modelling has many benefits over other forms of fire simulation, it requires a great deal of expertise on the user’s part to obtain reasonable simulation results. The project described in this paper, SMARTFIRE, aims to relieve some of this dependence on expertise so that users are less concerned with the details of CFD analysis and can concentrate on results. This aim is achieved by the use of an expert system component as part of the software suite which takes some of the expertise burden away from the user. SMARTFIRE also makes use of the latest developments in CFD technology in order to make the CFD analysis more efficient. This paper describes design considerations of the SMARTFIRE software, emphasising its open architecture, CFD engine and knowledge based systems.

The FUELCON meta-architecture, in the landscape of intelligent technologies for refuelling

The conception of the FUELCON architecture, of a composite tool for the generation and validation of patterns for assigning fuel assemblies to the positions in the grid of a reactor core section, has undergone an evolution throughout the history of the project. Different options for various subtask were possible, envisioned, or actually explored or adopted. We project these successive, or even concomitant configurations of the architecture, into a meta-architecture, which quite not by chance happens to reflect basic choices in the field's history over the last decade.

Intelligent technologies for nuclear power systems: heuristic and neural tools

The consecutive, partly overlapping emergence of expert systems and then neural computation methods among intelligent technologies, is reflected in the evolving scene of their application to nuclear engineering. This paper provides a bird's eye view of the state of the application in the domain, along with a review of a particular task, the one perhaps economically more important: refueling design in nuclear power reactors.

SMARTFIRE: an intelligent CFD based fire model

This paper describes a project aimed at making Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)- based fire simulation accessible to members of the fire safety engineering community. Over the past few years, the practice of CFD-based fire simulation has begun the transition from the confines of the research laboratory to the desk of the fire safety engineer. To a certain extent, this move has been driven by the demands of performance based building codes. However, while CFD modeling has many benefits over other forms of fire simulation, it requires a great deal of expertise on the user’s part to obtain reasonable simulation results. The project described in this paper, SMARTFIRE, aims to relieve some of this dependence on expertise so that users are less concerned with the details of CFD analysis and can concentrate on results. This aim is achieved by the use of an expert system component as part of the software suite which takes some of the expertise burden away from the user. SMARTFIRE also makes use of the latest developments in CFD technology in order to make the CFD analysis more efficient. This paper describes design considerations of the SMARTFIRE software, emphasizing its open architecture, CFD engine and knowledge-based systems.

An intelligent assistant for design and material engineers in the submarine cable industry

This paper describes an industrial application of case-based reasoning in engineering. The application involves an integration of case-based reasoning (CBR) retrieval techniques with a relational database. The database is specially designed as a repository of experiential knowledge and with the CBR application in mind such as to include qualitative search indices. The application is for an intelligent assistant for design and material engineers in the submarine cable industry. The system consists of three components; a material classifier and a database of experiential knowledge and a CBR system is used to retrieve similar past cases based on component descriptions. Work has shown that an uncommon retrieval technique, hierarchical searching, well represents several search indices and that this techniques aids the implementation of advanced techniques such as context sensitive weights. The system is currently undergoing user testing at the Alcatel Submarine Cables site in Greenwich. Plans are for wider testing and deployment over several sites internationally.

The integration of an intelligent knowledge-based system into engineering software using the blackboard structure

Over recent years there has been an increase in the use of generic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software packages spread across various application fields. This has created the need for the integration of expertise into CFD software. Expertise can be integrated into CFD software in the form of an Intelligent Knowledge-Based System (IKBS). The advantages of integrating intelligence into generic engineering software are discussed with a special view to software engineering considerations. The software modelling cycle of a typical engineering problem is identified and the respective expertise and user control needed for each modelling phase is shown. The requirements of an IKBS for CFD software are discussed and compared to current practice. The blackboard software architecture is presented. This is shown to be appropriate for the integration of an IKBS into an engineering software package. This is demonstrated through the presentation of the prototype CFD software package FLOWES.

Intelligent design assistant (IDA): a case base reasoning system for material and design

This paper describes the approach to the modelling of experiential knowledge in an industrial application of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). The CBR involves retrieval techniques in conjunction with a relational database. The database is especially designed as a repository of experiential knowledge, and includes qualitative search indices. The system is intended to help design engineers and material engineers in the submarine cable industry. It consists of three parts: a materials database; a database of experiential knowledge; and a CBR system used to retrieve similar past designs based upon component and material qualitative descriptions. The system is currently undergoing user testing at the Alcatel Submarine Networks site in Greenwich.