Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Ill-Defined Domains - Philippe ...
Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Ill-Defined Domains - Philippe ...
Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Ill-Defined Domains - Philippe ...
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1.2 Cases in Case-Based Instruction<br />
The use of case-based instruction is believed to help students develop skills of critical<br />
analysis and problem solving [7, 8, 14], encourage the development of higher order<br />
cognitive thinking, increase technical rational thinking [15] and provide a safe<br />
environment to practice and discuss [2]. Yet empirical data to demonstrate transfer<br />
and impact on learners is scarce [16].<br />
Proponents of case-based instruction do not seem to make a clear distinction<br />
between what constitutes a case and how cases are used. By contrasting teacher<br />
education to other field that use cases, Carter [17] tries to get a better definition of<br />
what a case is or isn’t. In earlier work she has defined cases as stories that “consist of<br />
events, characters, and settings arranged in a temporal sequence implying both<br />
causality and significance” [18]. Later, she proposes four different views of what a<br />
case can be: a case as exemplar, a case as problem situation, a case as a story and a<br />
case as a narrative. The distinction she makes can be useful but she fails to give<br />
definition or concrete examples to differentiate them and focuses on underlining<br />
differences in how these different types of cases are used. The difference between<br />
cases as exemplars and problems is not clear but she refers to them as conventional<br />
uses of cases where the cases are subordinate to propositional knowledge and where<br />
cases are made to be clear and classified as a piece of the curriculum. She refers to<br />
narratives and stories as more authentic and rich, yet the difference between the case<br />
as story and case as narrative is not clear. Narratives are lived experiences or<br />
personal life stories but the definition of cases as stories does not exclude narratives.<br />
She refers to “storied knowledge” arguing about the autonomous status of story as an<br />
expression of knowledge, and argues that we should not try to get the story to fit into<br />
the curriculum; we should free the stories of the framework. Her argument<br />
demonstrates a dichotomous conception of cases as either free <strong>for</strong>m narrative or rigid<br />
exemplar made to “fit” the curriculum.<br />
1.3 Case-Based Reasoning<br />
Using Expert Decision Maps 70<br />
Case-based reasoning (CBR) is referred to as an approach to learning and problem<br />
solving [19]. Contrasting with holistic and nonspecific views of cases as stories that<br />
should be completely free of <strong>for</strong>m, researchers in artificial intelligence have tried to<br />
define and build intelligent systems using very structured cases. In the CBR<br />
approach, a case is a structured way of representing a story or a problem. Kolodner<br />
[20] compares these “real” or “made-up” cases to movie scripts which include “a<br />
setting, the actors and their goals, a sequence of events, the expected results, what<br />
actually happened (if it is known), and explanations linking outcomes to goals and<br />
means” (p.226). CBR comes from research in cognitive science and artificial<br />
intelligence. This approach originates from computer scientists [21] who were trying<br />
to design intelligent systems that could behave more like experts. Proponents of this<br />
approach see the mind as a record of thousands of “cases” [22-24] and propose that<br />
humans make sense of new cases by comparing and matching characteristics and<br />
features of these new cases with previous ones. Through experience humans can<br />
generalize from cases and create scripts and schema. Authors in CBR literature use