A Research On The Design And Application Of ITS In A Substation Training System

Since substation plants play a vital role in the socio-economical development of a nation, knowledge on its functioning and maintenance is very important. In the past, such knowledge was taught in a classroom environment where the instructor demonstrated the tasks using typical examples, tutorials and lab sessions. Although one-to-one human tutoring is the most effective mode of teaching, there will never be sufficient resources to provide individualized attention to every student. Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) offer bright prospects to fulfilling the goal of providing individualized pedagogical sessions to all students. Studies have shown that ITS with problem-solving environments are ideal tools for enhancing learning in domains where extensive practice is essential. It attempts to optimize the student' s mastery of domain knowledge by controlling the introduction of new problems, concepts, instructions and feedback. Ideal student modeling is the base of the intelligence of ITS systems and is always one of the key points so far as ITS research is concerned. This thesis describes the design, implementation and evaluation of an ITS named SCOPY developed as a problem-solving environment for the training system of a substation plant in which users and workers of the system can practice their knowledge concerning the said field with the individualized assistance of the system. The student can ask for guidance from the system during any stage of the problem solving process which ends up with an assessment session during which SCOPY evaluates the solution and presents feedback on its errors. The system adapts to each individual student by providing individualized hint messages and selecting new problems that best suit the student.