Contents of Volume 30 2002

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 30 2002     

Beyond intelligent tutoring systems: Situations,interactions, processes and affordances

The idea of an intelligentsystem to support learning has been epitomisedby that of an intelligent tutoring system(ITS). However, ITSs are, in fact, just aparticular kind of intelligent system tosupport learning whose components reflect thevalues of the particular view that ITSsemphasise in regard to the nature of knowledge,learning and teaching, which have led to anarchitecture that focuses on representing theknowledge to be learned (domain model),inferring the learner's knowledge (learnermodel), and planning instructional steps to thelearner (teaching model). On the other hand,other views of learning may lead to differentneeds in terms of knowledge representation,reasoning, and decision making capabilities inthe intelligent systems that support them.Constructivist views, for example, emphasisedifferent values and may require an entirelydifferent architecture of intelligent system tosupport its philosophy of learning. This paperpresents an architecture of an intelligentsystem to support learning that is able toaddress the issues that arise fromconstructivist theories of learning in a waythat, rather than opposing to the standard ITSarchitecture, characterises a broader view inall its components which can be appropriatelyattuned to address the issues of particularphilosophies.     

Situations,interactions, processes and affordances: A response

This is a brief response to thecommentaries provided by Young, DePalma andGarrett and by Azevedo on our original paper(Akhras & Self, this issue). In this responsewe elaborate on the aims of ourconceptualization, focussing on the nature ofaffordances and situations.     

Computing and the Teaching of Structural Analysis/ Le calcul par ordinateur et l'enseignement de l'analyse des structures

Computer structural analysis is now one of the fundamental pillars in the teaching of engineering. The task is to capitalize on all the new technologies in order primarily to help the students understand the behaviour of structures and, by the same token, improve their ability to analyze them. Consequently, the computer has to be exploited in a smart and ingenious way to achieve this task better. If, in the past, this was done in a more or less successful way, it is nowadays extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to perform this task in a satisfactory manner. This is changing not only the teaching of structural analysis but also the content of the engineering courses. Hence, a reassessment and a reorganization of the teaching of computing for structural analysis have to take place. In this paper, a few ideas on the teaching of computing for structural analysis are discussed.