Providing Feedback to Equation Entries in an Intelligent Tutoring System for Physics

Andes, an intelligent tutoring system for Newtonian physics, provides an environment for students to solve quantitative physics problems. Andes provides immediate correct/incorrect feedback to each student entry during problem solving. When a student enters an equation, Andes must (1) determine quickly whether that equation is correct, and (2) provide helpful feedback indicating what is wrong with the student's entry. To address the former, we match student equations against a pre-generated list of correct equations. To address the latter, we use the pre-generated equations to infer what equation the student may have been trying to enter, and generate hints based on the discrepancies. This paper describes the representation of equations and the procedures An-des uses to perform these tasks.