Enhanced STEM Subject Outcomes from the Use of Intelligent Tutors
(Room S320D)
29 Nov 17
2:00 PM
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2:30 PM
The military training and education community spends hundreds of hours a year on training warfighters not just for the job in front of them, but their next job, and contingencies foreseen and unforeseen. This training and education process requires a strong foundation of understanding Joint or Service procedures, and is dependent on each warfighter’s area of specialization. There are highly technical skill-sets that can decay if unused or un-refreshed on a regular basis. Refresher training is often conducted as a standard process, untailored to each individual’s unique skill-set. School age children are, in the end, no different in this learning challenge. A student's proficiency in foundational arithmetic and algebraic skills is critical for success in algebra and higher-level math courses.
Building on data from previous STEM-focused learning interventions, this paper will discuss a case study for applying diagnostic measures as a way to enhance and adapt future learning, focused on application of this technique for 7th and 8th grade foundational math; it will also propose integration techniques with current military data collection concepts such as xAPI. Application of this intervention process proved that use of the intelligent tutor makes for better grades, but also helps to develop and maintain those critical building blocks in the path to success in future STEM pursuits. The framework is currently populated with math content to create an Algebra Readiness Program, whose results will be discussed, but the framework is content agnostic so it can be used to develop effective teaching tools for other subject domains for which proficiency is dependent on learning and retaining declarative knowledge. As the STEM community puts these structured interventions to use, the extrapolation of these techniques to all stages of the military learning environment is crucial.