French Verb Tutor Game
Teaching the distinction between the passé composé and imparfait French past tenses can be difficult, particularly for students that do not have analogous concepts in their native languages (such as native English speakers). This domain is an example of an ill-defined task, because rules are hard to formalize and the conditions under which they apply are too specific and numerous to be described. Intelligent tutoring systems have had success at increasing learning in well-defined domains, but they have been relatively untested in ill-defined domains, in part because tutoring systems tend to require a model and it is difficult to construct a model for an ill-defined domain. In this project, we build an intelligent tutor for teaching French aspect in order to explore how intelligent tutoring principles might be adapted to ill-defined domains more generally. Currently, we are also exploring how educational game principles might apply in this domain.