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Abstract
Although Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) have been the subject of research and development over the past three decades and have been shown many times to produce exceptional results, they have only negligibly impacted mainstream higher education. This thesis argues that in order to drive ITS technology into the mainstream its paradigm should shift from being researcher-centric to teacher-centric. Such a shift in focus raises the question - what is the role of teachers in using ITS technology? In order to answer this question, a conceptual framework is developed, called pedagogical ownership, and a case is made that when teachers can pedagogically own ITS content, they are more likely to adopt it and use it.
The thesis proceeds to develop a design paradigm for a specific type of intelligent tutoring system called Adaptive Tutorials. This paradigm, called Virtual Apparatus Framework (VAF), is developed with the motivation to promote teachers' pedagogical ownership over adaptive tutorials. This pedagogically principled requirement leads to concrete software architectural implications, which are explored and discussed. The Adaptive eLearning Platform (AeLP) - a software implementation of VAF which supports the life-cycle of adaptive tutorials - is described. It has been used to develop a set of adaptive tutorials in a variety of disciplines.
The important question of methodology for evaluation is itself a subject of inquiry for this thesis. There are no established methodologies for evaluating the degree to which ITS authoring tools and development paradigms support teachers. The thesis puts forward the case for using pedagogical ownership as a key criterion for evaluation of ITS authoring tools. The degree to which VAF and the AeLP promote teacher's pedagogical ownership of adaptive tutorials is then evaluated in several case studies. Each case study features a detailed discussion of the development process in VAF, focusing on the teacher's role, and an analysis, based on evidence and interviews, of the characteristics of VAF that contributed towards the teacher's sense of pedagogical ownership.
Refocusing on the teacher's role as pedagogical owner of ITS content provides a new way of approaching key research questions in the field of ITS architecture and authoring tools.