Nguyen-Thinh Le

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | HU Berlin · Department of Computer Science

Discourse and argumentation are effective techniques for education not only in social domains but also in science domains. However, it is difficult for some teachers to stimulate an active discussion between students because several students might not be able to develop their arguments. In this paper, we propose to use WordNet as a semantic source...

Problems for which multiple solution strategies are possible can be challenging for intelligent tutors. These kinds of problems are often the norm in exploratory learning environments which allow students to develop solutions in a creative manner without many restrictions imposed by the problem solving interface. How can intelligent tutors determin...

One of the most effective ways to learn is through problem solving. Recently, researchers have started to develop educational systems which are intended to support solving ill-defined problems. Most researchers agree that there is no sharp distinction but rather a continuum between well-definedness and ill-definedness. However, positioning a proble...

In this paper, we introduce logic programming as a domain that exhibits some characteristics of being ill-defined. In order to diagnose student errors in such a domain, we need a means to hypothesise the student's intention, that is the strategy underlying her solution. This is achieved by weighting constraints, so that hypotheses about solution st...

In everyday life, people seek, evaluate, and use online sources to underpin opinions and make decisions. While education must promote the skills people need to critically question the sourcing of online information, it is important, more generally, to understand how to successfully promote the acquisition of any skills related to seeking online inf...

The Development of Computational Thinking skills in elementary school students can be done through different activities, with or without the use of computers or technological devices. In this sense, the use of programmable robots brings many of the advantages of educational robotics for teaching fundamental aspects of Computing. This paper describe...

The affective state of an individual can be determined using physiological parameters; an important metric that can then be extracted is attention. Looking more closely at compact EEGs, algorithms have been implemented in such devices that can measure the attention and other affective states of the user. No information about these algorithms is ava...

In everyday life, people seek, evaluate, and use online sources to underpin opinions and make decisions. While education must promote the skills people need to critically question the sourcing of online information, it is important, more generally, to understand how to successfully promote the acquisition of any skills related to seeking online inf...

Learning analytics applications exploit data about learners. In addition to cognitive and physical data about learners, recent research is motivated by the correlation between data on the physiological dimension and the cognitive performance. In order to collect physiological data, different types of physiological sensors can be used, among which t...

This paper reviews existing computer-supported learning systems that have claimed to adopt Socratic methods for enhancing critical thinking. Several notions of Socratic methods are differentiated: the critical thinking framework of Paul and Elder (2006), the classic Socratic method, the modern Socratic method, and the neo-Socratic group discussion...

This paper reviews existing computer-supported learning systems that have claimed to adopt Socratic methods for enhancing critical thinking. Several notions of Socratic methods are differentiated: the critical thinking framework of Paul and Elder (2006), the classic Socratic method, the modern Socratic method, and the neo-Socratic group discussion...

We report on the results of a study with 105 teachers about the practice of question asking in German schools. Most teachers deploy questions as an important teaching method, however, just a small number of them possess systematic question asking techniques and prepare questions systematically for their lessons. This is a motivation for us to propo...

During the last 50 years, since the development of ELIZA by Weizenbaum, technologies for developing conversational systems have made a great stride. The number of conversational systems is increasing. Conversational systems emerge almost in every digital device in many application areas. In this paper, we present the review of the development of co...

Cognitive Assistants support humans and enhance their capabilities in solving a wide variety of complex tasks. In this paper, we introduce a Cognitive Assistant named LIZA that is developed as a pedagogical agent and aims at improving the reasoning and decision making abilities of its users. This Cognitive Assistant is able to hold conversation wit...

These proceedings consist of 19 papers, which have been peer-reviewed by international program committee and selected for the 5th International Conference on Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Applications (ICCSAMA 2017), which was held on June 30–July 1, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. The respective chapters discuss both theoretical and practical...

Semantic web and lexical databases offer multifaceted purposes. In this chapter, we present an automatic question generation framework for teachers that deploys semantic web and lexical databases for generating questions for a specific lesson topic. This framework is intended to assist teachers in preparing questions for their lessons. We investiga...

In this paper, we report results of an evaluation study that investigate the applicability and usefulness of the formal models of the Socratic Method. Nelson suggested that the Socratic Method, which is employed in teaching consists of three phases: searching for examples, searching for attributes and generalizing the attributes. These formal model...

Over the last three decades, many educational systems for programming have been developed to support learning/teaching programming. In this paper, feedback types that are supported by existing educational systems for programming are classified. In order to be able to provide feedback, educational systems for programming deployed various approaches...

Over the last three decades, many educational systems for programming have been developed to support learning/teaching programming. In order to help students solve programming problems, many educational systems use the means of meaningful feedback that is resulted through an accurate analysis of student programs. In this paper, I review and classif...

In this paper, we present three formal models of three phases of the Socratic Method that is suggested by Nelson to be employed in teaching. The three phases are searching for examples, searching for attributes and generalizing the attributes. These formal models are intended to serve in a computerized learning environment where users can train wit...

In this paper, I propose an approach to using semantic web data for generating questions that are intended to help people develop arguments in a dis-cussion session. Applying this approach, a question generation system that ex-ploits WordNet for generating questions for argumentation has been developed. This paper describes a study that investigate...

Discourse and argumentation are effective techniques for education not only in social domains but also in science domains. However, it is difficult for some teachers to stimulate an active discussion between students because several students might not be able to develop their arguments. This paper proposes to use WordNet as a semantic source in ord...

Discourse and argumentation are effective techniques for education not only in social domains but also in science domains. However, it is difficult for some teachers to stimulate an active discussion between students because several students might not be able to develop their arguments. This paper proposes to use WordNet as a semantic source in ord...

This paper attempts to identify the key requirements for learning tools that facilitate learning processes both in formal classroom settings and on outdoor field trips. For that purpose, a qualitative study has been conducted that consisted of interviewing ten teachers from two different states of Germany. The study showed that field trips are a co...

Given a discussion topic, students may sometimes not proceed with their argumentation. Can questions which are semantically related to a given discussion topic help students develop further arguments? In this paper, we introduce a technical approach to generating questions upon the request of students during the process of collaborative argumentati...

When researchers of the AIEDCS (AI-supported Education for Computer Science) community want to exchange programming exercises as base-lines for e.g., evaluation purposes, several questions related to the difficulty of exercises will arise: What kind of programming exercises are supported by an intelligent learning environment? How difficult are the...

Recently, researchers from multiple disciplines have been showing their common interest in automatic question generation for educational purposes. In this paper, we review the state of the art of approaches to developing educational applications of question generation. We conclude that although a great variety of techniques on automatic question ge...

Recent prior studies with argumentation systems have shown that, unfortunately, with larger learner groups using argumentation software over longer periods of time, argument maps inevitably increase greatly in size and complexity, often leading to learner confusion. To help users understand and navigate within large and complex argument maps, we im...

The global economy increasingly depends upon Computer Science and Information Technology professionals to maintain and expand the infrastructure on which business, education, governments, and social networks rely. Demand is growing for a global workforce that is well versed and can easily adapt ever-increasing technology. For these reasons, there i...

In complex application systems, there are typically not only autonomous components which can be represented by agents, but humans may also play a role. The interaction between agents and humans can be learned to enhance the stability of a system. How can agents adopt strategies of humans to solve conflict situations? In this paper, we present a lea...

The spread of social media provides a great opportunity to enhance the transparency, participation and collaboration in modern democracies. Since nothing is perfect, a best practice engineering approach can be used to conti- nuously monitor processes and operations that are applied in increasing the par- ticipation of people and improving public se...

In this paper, we review tutoring approaches of computer-supported systems for learning programming. From the survey we have learned three lessons. First, various AI-supported tutoring approaches have been developed and most existing systems use a feedback-based tutoring approach for supporting students. Second, the AI techniques deployed to suppor...

Syntactic mistakes and misconceptions in programming can have a negative impact on students' learning gains, and thus require particular attention in order to help students learn programming. In this paper, we propose embedding a discourse on syntactic issues and student's misconceptions into a dialogue between a student and an intelligent tutor. B...

Researchers of constructivist learning suggest that students should rather learn to solve real-world problems than artificial problems. This paper proposes a smart constructivist learning environment which provides real-world problems collected from crowd-sourcing problem-solution exchange platforms. In addition, this learning environment helps stu...

In complex application systems, there are typically not only autonomous components which can be represented by agents, but humans may also play a role. The interaction between agents and humans can be learned to enhance the stability of a system. How can agents adopt strategies of humans to solve conflict situations? In this paper, we present a lea...

Multi-agent approaches can be applied to model behaviour and relations of entities in cyber-physical systems. Here entities frequently compete on insufficient resources (e.g., hardware) at the same time. Hence, resource conflicts between several agents are one of the most important conflict types in such multi-agent systems. These conflicts can sig...

Modeling skills are essential during the process of learning programming. ITS systems for modeling are typically hard to build due to the ill-definedness of most modeling tasks. This paper presents a system that can teach UML skills to novice programmers. The system is "simple and cheap" in the sense that it only requires an expert solution against...

The constraint-based modeling (CBM) approach for deve-loping intelligent tutoring systems has shown useful in several domains. However, when applying this approach to an exploratory environment where students are allowed to explore a large solution space for problems to be solved, this approach encounters its limitation: It is not well suited to de...

In a social computational system, there exist not only social interactions between software agents but also between humans and agents. Through interactions with humans, agents can acquire more knowledge, e.g., in problem solving. Usually, agents are hard-coded with anticipated abilities and their knowledge cannot evolve dynamically. In this paper,...

This paper proposes a new metaphor for constructing systems of systems: Autonomous Agents in Organized Localities (AAOL). An agent-based approach is used for modeling structure and behavior of complex systems that consist of (semi-)autonomous systems, where goals, resources, capabilities are described locally while a need for superordinated ”global...

Constraint-based modelling techniques have been demonstrated a useful means to develop intelligent tutoring systems in several domains. However, when applying CBM to tasks which require students to explore a large solution space, this approach encounters its limitation: it is not well suited to hypothesize the solution variant intended by the stude...

Programming is a complex process which usually results in a large space of solutions. However, existing software systems which support students in solving programming problems often restrict students to fill in pre-specified solution templates or to follow an ideal solution path. In this paper, we introduce a web-based homework coaching system for...

Recently, some researchers on intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) have been moving their focus to ill-defined domains, trying to develop modeling and tutoring approaches for these domains. Several workshops on this issue have been organized [1, 2]. However, up to now a generally accepted definition of ill-definedness has not emerged yet. Several cha...

Weighted constraints have been proven a useful means to enhance the quality of error diagnosis, e.g., in the domain of natural language parsing. In this paper, we propose an heuristic approach using constraint weights to analyze learning curves for weighted constraint-based tutoring systems as an addition (or alternative) to the commonly used analy...

Currently, there are two communities which focus on question and problem generation. The first one has been starting from 2006 and runs workshops at the ICCE conference, whereas the second one has been established since 2008 and has been hosted at AIED2009 and ITS2010. Through these two communities, numerous approaches to generating questions and p...

In this paper, we report on the learning benefits of the system INCOM, a constraint-based tutoring system which assists students doing their homework assignments in logic programming. The system has been evaluated with 35 students as part of a logic programming course. The evaluation indicated that the students using INCOM have improved their progr...

Programming should be considered as an ill-defined domain because for a given programming problem there might be many alternative solution strategies and for each of them a wide spectrum of solutions can be created. Most program- ming problems, which are used to tutor beginners, are simple and might have well-defined start and goal states. The task...

Researchers agree that error diagnosis is one of the most important components of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Since in ambitious domains a perfect error diagnosis can not be guaranteed, the diagnostic accuracy of an ITS within an ill-defined domain should attract more attention. In this paper we introduce our constraint-based error diagno...

Intelligent Tutoring Systems have made great strides in recent years. Many of these gains have been achieved for well-defined problems. However, solving ill-defined problems is important because it can enhance the cognitive, metacognitive and argumentation skills of a student. In this paper, we demonstrate how to apply the constraint-based modellin...

In this paper, we present the evaluation result of our constraint-based tutoring system for logic programming from which we derive the conclusion that students need diagnostic information and remedial hints corresponding to the stage of the problem solving process where they are stuck. For this reason, we propose a three steps diagnosis approach wh...

We applied the constraint-based approach to develop a web-based diagnosis system for Prolog. In this paper, we introduce the results of our formative evaluation which reflects the current effectiveness of our system. We gathered 261 log files which are created by 99 users contained records of interactions with the tutoring system. In addition, we p...

Using the constraint-based modeling approach, we have developed a diagnostic component, which is able to identify errors made by learners of a logic programming language when implementing a given task specification. It uses patterns to hypothesize the intention of a learner and programming techniques to model conditions on the semantic well-formedn...

For a design problem in a modeling language like UML, there is no single correct solution. Usually, there are many solutions, which satisfy a given problem specification. In principle, the solution space can be infinite. However, current approaches evaluate student's entries by comparing them with a limited set of possible solutions and errors. Som...

In this paper, we describe a component of a self-assessment system which is capable to generate different exercise instances for different users. The system is used to give prospective students of Informatics a better feeling what kind of thinking skills this discipline requires. The system offers diversified problem tasks and by observing the perf...