An algebraic model uses a set of algebra equations to precisely describe a situation. Constructing such models is a fundamental skill required by US standards for both math and science. It is usually taught with algebra word problems. However, many students still lack the skill, even after taking several algebra courses in high school and college.…

Although the Andes project produced many results over its 18 years of activity, this commentary focuses on its contributions to understanding how a goal-free user interface impacts the overall design and performance of a step-based tutoring system. Whereas a goal-aligned user interface displays relevant goals as blank boxes or empty locations that…

This commentary suggests a generalization of the conception of the behavior of tutoring systems, which the target article characterized as having an outer loop that was executed once per task and an inner loop that was executed once per step of the task. A more general conception sees these two loops as instances of regulative loops, which…

A common hypothesis is that students will more deeply understand dynamic systems and other complex phenomena if they construct computational models of them. Attempts to demonstrate the advantages of model construction have been stymied by the long time required for students to acquire skill in model construction. In order to make model…

Pedagogical strategies are policies for a tutor to decide the next action when there are multiple actions available. When the content is controlled to be the same across experimental conditions, there has been little evidence that tutorial decisions have an impact on students' learning. In this paper, we applied Reinforcement Learning (RL) to…

Self-explaining is a domain-independent learning strategy that generally leads to a robust understanding of the domain material. However, there are two potential explanations for its effectiveness. First, self-explanation generates additional "content" that does not exist in the instructional materials. Second, when compared to…