Intelligent Learning Tool
The dream of the designer is to provide each student with a
computer-based tutor. The computer-based tutor has the qualities of a teacher.
Intelligent Learning Tool (ILT) is designed to meet the needs of the designer.
Intelligent Learning Tool is a Web-based Tutoring Application that supports
learning resources so developed. ILT is a tool for enhancing individual
student’s learning by teaching materials in a step-by-step process.
The proposed architecture benefits from the bottom-middle
and top-middle approaches of system development. The bottom-middle approach is
from choosing the appropriate data structures and programming languages used to
maximizing the performance of the ILT system on the Web-browser. The top-middle
approach is from designing the Graphical User Interface of the ILT system to
performing the correct functionality of the ILT system on the Web-browser.
ILT is built using servlets, which are modules that extend
request/response-oriented servers, such as Java-enabled web servers. For
instance, a servlet might be responsible for taking data in an HTML form and
applying the logic used based on a database.
Servlets are to servers what applets are to browsers.
Unlike applets, however, servlets have no graphical user interface [1].
Servlets can be embedded in different servers because of
the servlet API. The sevlet API, which you use, is to write servlets, assumes
nothing about the server's environment or protocol. Within HTTP servers,
servlets have become widely used. Many web servers support Java Servlet
technology.
An effective replacement for CGI scripts is servlets since
they provide a way to generate dynamic documents, which is easier to write and
faster to run. Servlets also show the problem of doing server-side programming
with platform-specific APIs: they are developed with a standard Java extension -
the Java Servlet API.
Servlets are used to handle HTTP client requests. For example, servlets process data POSTed over HTTPs using an HTML form. A servlet like this could be part of an entry and processing system, working with databases, and perhaps an online system. To learn more about servlets, please see reference [1].
The design, development and implementation of ILT is
contributed from the previous experience of the designer as a software engineer
and the present as a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at
Western Illinois University (WIU). The previous experience helps in designing
and determining appropriate functionalities for ILT. The present helps in giving
a lot of new and old ideas about different computer-assisted instruction and
intelligent tutoring system. Other contributions are from Dr. Lee H. Tichenor
[7] - the advisor for this project, Dr. Dennis DeVolder [3] – the designer’s
CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) instructor during Summer 2001, and Dr.
Laurence Leff [5] – the designer’s helper in the WIU computer lab.
The knowledge domain for this project is a portion of the
Computer Science 365: Microcomputer Graphics class materials [6]. The learning
involves memorizing and understanding as well as asking questions and taking a
quiz from various topics under various chapter headings. The learning style
performed on the Web-based system is straightforward and simple. This learning
method is not yet known to be effective, since no prior survey has ever been
conducted.
Finally the designer realizes that ILT is not robust enough. ILT does not recover from all possible ways that user can crash the system.
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