RMT in the Classroom
Elizabeth Arnott, Peter Hastings, and David Allbritton. RMT in the Classroom. In Proceedings of the Midwest Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science conference, Los Angeles, CA, 2007.
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Abstract
Research Methods Tutor (RMT) is a dialog-based intelligent tutoring system designed for use in conjunction with courses in psychology research methods. The current RMT system includes five topic sections: ethics, variables, reliability, validity, and experimental design. The tutor can be used in an "agent mode," which utilizes synthesized speech and an interactive pedagogical agent, or in a "text-only mode,"which presents the tutor content in written text on the screen. The tutor was used in three psychology research methods courses during the winter and spring quarters of 2006 at DePaul University. These three sections were evaluated against two (non-equivalent) control sections that did not use the RMT system. Pretest and posttest scores on a research methods knowledge test were used to assess learning in each class. Results indicated that, compared with the two control sections, the classes that used RMT showed significantly higher learning gains. In addition, those that used the agent version of the tutor showed significantly higher learning gains than those who used the text-only version of the tutor. Future directions will focus on expanding the current RMT content to include conceptual statistics and more complex research designs and to identify subgroups of students for which RMT may be particularly useful.
BibTeX
@InProceedings{Arnott:maics2007,
author = name:epd,
title = {RMT in the Classroom},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Midwest Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science conference},
year = {2007},
address = {Los Angeles, CA},
cvnote = {},
abstract = {Research Methods Tutor (RMT) is a dialog-based intelligent
tutoring system designed for use in conjunction with
courses in psychology research methods. The current RMT
system includes five topic sections: ethics, variables,
reliability, validity, and experimental design. The tutor can
be used in an "agent mode," which utilizes synthesized
speech and an interactive pedagogical agent, or in a "text-only mode,"
which presents the tutor content in written text
on the screen. The tutor was used in three psychology
research methods courses during the winter and spring
quarters of 2006 at DePaul University. These three sections
were evaluated against two (non-equivalent) control
sections that did not use the RMT system. Pretest and
posttest scores on a research methods knowledge test were
used to assess learning in each class. Results indicated that,
compared with the two control sections, the classes that
used RMT showed significantly higher learning gains. In
addition, those that used the agent version of the tutor
showed significantly higher learning gains than those who
used the text-only version of the tutor. Future directions
will focus on expanding the current RMT content to include
conceptual statistics and more complex research designs and
to identify subgroups of students for which RMT may be
particularly useful.}
}