An empirical study for the development of a Web-based authoring tool for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

⎯Authoring tools for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have recently received a lot of attention from researchers in computer-based education. The reason for this is that they may provide environments where instructors may author their own ITSs in varying domains. In this way, painful constructions of ITSs, which may not be reusable, are avoided. However, the construction of an authoring tool is much more difficult than the construction of an ITS which is also considered difficult. Moreover, it is an area which is not yet well understood. In this paper we will report on an empirical study that we conducted in order to design and develop WEAR, an ITS authoring tool for Algebra-related domains. The study consisted of two phases where we investigated aspects concerning the attitude and behaviour of both students and instructors. This paper focuses on the parts of the study concerning the instructors. It also provides a brief description of the developed system’s operation for the instructor in order to highlight how the resulting design specifications were put into practice. Keywords⎯Authoring tools, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Knowledge Engineering, User Modelling.