Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Volume 8 - Data Visualization

Book excerpt: This book on data visualization is the eighth in a planned series of books that examine key topics (e.g., learner modeling, instructional strategies, authoring, domain modeling, assessment, team tutoring, self-improving systems, data visualization, and competency based scenario design) in intelligent tutoring system (ITS) design. This book focuses on data visualization and how it is applied in ITSs. The chapters within this book specifically examine topics in relationship to the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) (Sottilare, Brawner, Goldberg & Holden, 2012; Sottilare, Brawner, Sinatra, & Johnston, 2017). GIFT is an open-source, domain-independent, modular, service-oriented architecture for ITSs. The design of GIFT allows for reusability, reduction in authoring time, and reducing the skill level needed to create an ITS. GIFT provides functionality to create ITSs, distribute ITSs to learners through the Cloud, conduct research to evaluate ITSs, and to examine instructional outcomes. Data visualization is an important topic for ITSs, as there are many different users of the systems (including learners, instructors, researchers, subject matter experts). The data that is collected by the ITS can be organized and displayed in a number of different ways. The current book includes a general discussion of how data visualizations can be applied in ITSs, as well as detailed specific examples of existing implementations, and technical details related to incorporating data visualization in ITSs. We believe this book can be used as a design tool for data visualization interfaces in ITSs.