Agents, Profiles, Learning Styles and Tutors

Introduction or decades educators have recognized that learners bring a variety of degrees of knowledge and of learning preferences to learning environments. These recognized differences in learning preferences have given rise to a number of strategies which have resulted in limited success in creating learning environments in which the strengths of the user are used to enrich the learning experience. The failure of this knowledge to provide marked improvements in the instructional delivery process is often attributable to the fact that the implementation of these strategies is performed with one individual acting in the role of facilitator. That is, one teacher, who by definition has a preferred learning style, is often expected to attend to the myriad learning styles of an entire class. Research has shown that to address these differences in this manner is a task for which most humans are unable to perform.