TY - JOUR
T1 - The relative effectiveness of human tutoring, intelligent tutoring systems, and other tutoring systems
AU - VanLehn, Kurt
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful for the close readings and thoughtful comments of Michelene T. H. Chi, Dexter Fletcher, Jared Freedman, Kasia Muldner, and Stellan Ohlsson. My research summarized here was supported by many years of funding from the Office of Naval Research (N00014-00-1-0600) and National Science Foundation (9720359, EIA-0325054, 0354420, 0836012, and DRL-0910221).
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - This article is a review of experiments comparing the effectiveness of human tutoring, computer tutoring, and no tutoring. "No tutoring" refers to instruction that teaches the same content without tutoring. The computer tutoring systems were divided by their granularity of the user interface interaction into answer-based, step-based, and substep-based tutoring systems. Most intelligent tutoring systems have step-based or substep-based granularities of interaction, whereas most other tutoring systems (often called CAI, CBT, or CAL systems) have answer-based user interfaces. It is widely believed as the granularity of tutoring decreases, the effectiveness increases. In particular, when compared to No tutoring, the effect sizes of answer-based tutoring systems, intelligent tutoring systems, and adult human tutors are believed to be d = 0.3, 1.0, and 2.0 respectively. This review did not confirm these beliefs. Instead, it found that the effect size of human tutoring was much lower: d = 0.79. Moreover, the effect size of intelligent tutoring systems was 0.76, so they are nearly as effective as human tutoring.
AB - This article is a review of experiments comparing the effectiveness of human tutoring, computer tutoring, and no tutoring. "No tutoring" refers to instruction that teaches the same content without tutoring. The computer tutoring systems were divided by their granularity of the user interface interaction into answer-based, step-based, and substep-based tutoring systems. Most intelligent tutoring systems have step-based or substep-based granularities of interaction, whereas most other tutoring systems (often called CAI, CBT, or CAL systems) have answer-based user interfaces. It is widely believed as the granularity of tutoring decreases, the effectiveness increases. In particular, when compared to No tutoring, the effect sizes of answer-based tutoring systems, intelligent tutoring systems, and adult human tutors are believed to be d = 0.3, 1.0, and 2.0 respectively. This review did not confirm these beliefs. Instead, it found that the effect size of human tutoring was much lower: d = 0.79. Moreover, the effect size of intelligent tutoring systems was 0.76, so they are nearly as effective as human tutoring.
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U2 - 10.1080/00461520.2011.611369
DO - 10.1080/00461520.2011.611369
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:82755170505
SN - 0046-1520
VL - 46
SP - 197
EP - 221
JO - Educational Psychologist
JF - Educational Psychologist
IS - 4
ER -