Design And Implementation Of A Computerized Tutor For Nursery And Primary School (Quantitative And Verbal Reasoning)

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

A look at the educational practices many people will perceive that there are some obstacles besetting the teaching of quantitative and verbal (English) reasoning in nursery and primary schools now days. Computer Assisted Instruction today presents new options and opportunities: powerful Machines, advanced computer science techniques, and input from cognitive psychology.

Using these tools well is a challenge for which there are few guidelines or examples. The Purpose of this write up is to describe how we used some simple artificial intelligence Techniques in a powerful educational programming environment to capture some of the Expertise of experienced teachers for an instructional program that runs on advanced Workstations.

How Cognitive Tutors Can Help

The above discussion suggests that we need a “tool” that will engage students with quantitative and verbal problems covering more than the current week’s topic. Ideally, this tool would encourage students to use variety of skills and to apply these skills in the context of real-world data sets. We propose that cognitive tutors offer one way to do just that. The name “cognitive tutor” refers to a computerized learning environment whose design is based on cognitive principles and whose interaction with students is based on that of a (human) tutor—i.e., making
comments when the student errs, answering questions about what to do next, and maintaining a low profile when the student is performing well.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The basic problems behind this design is the hardship in passing the knowledge of quantitative and verbal reasoning to nursery and primary school students. Before building a cognitive tutor for quantitative and verbal reasoning, it made sense to us to look for data that could help shape such an endeavor. There is much evidence that students have difficulty applying quantitative reasoning as a subject. We added to this body of empirical work by further investigating where (and hopefully why) these difficulties arise in the context of solving quantitative-reasoning problems.

Quantitative reasoning domain tests your ability to use numbers and mathematical concept to solve mathematical problems, as well as ability to analyze data presented in a variety of ways, such as in table or graph form. only a basic knowledge of mathematics is required

All the quantitative reasoning problems takes the form of multiple choice questions that is; questions followed by four responses, of which only one is the answer.

Quantitative reasoning questions consist on two categories of questions 1.questions and problems and graph or table comprehension.

English tutorial in other words verbal reasoning is multimedia based application intended to help nursery and primary school students, middle school student, high school student or in general, anyone interested in learning to learn the basic of English. The contents of the application are organized into different modules that comprises of interactive learning programs to develop skills for reading and writing alphabets, words, and sentences. The animations, pictures and sounds teach the association of objects and word along their spelling and pronunciation.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to design and implement a computerized tutor for primary school students on quantitative and verbal reasoning as the subject of focus, and ensure positive performance of every student involved.

1.4 Aims and Objectives

At the end of this study;

We will be able to understand the effectiveness of using a computerized tutor in the teaching of quantitative and verbal reasoning in nursery and primary schools

We will understand the negative and positive impact of implementing this.

Design and implementation of a computerized tutor for nursery and primary school will be possible

English tutor helps the learner understand and practice basic conversation skills with vocabulary, how to greet people, knowing more about them, how to make use of the language in their daily routine, how to invite people and how to request or ask for a favour from them. Making the user aware of the scenarios which the user come across when going around a place, about basic necessities, making him know the objects he may come across, things he may need while planning a journey, skills of describing a place, people the user have across e t c, about the way of answering a telephone call, basic etiquettes of talking on phone, extempore questions and their model answers.

1.5 Scope of Study

The study which is to design and implement a computerized tutor for nursery and primary school students on quantitative and verbal reasoning as the subjects would have covered a wider scope but for time and financial constraints, however the findings which is done by searching for information on the internet and related reviews could be used to make valid generalizations and implement a computerized tutor in the specified fields.

1.6 Definition of Terms

Tutor:

A private teacher, especially the one who teaches an individual or a small group

Computerized:

To provide a computer or computers to do the work of something

Teachers:

A professional that are foundation of quality education, hence teachers production are retention to effective education as an instrument per excellence for national development

Students:

A person who is studying at a school. A boy or a girl attending school or anyone who devotes acquisition to knowledge.

Cognitive:

Connected with mental processes of understanding

Quantitative Reasoning:

Testing of ones ability to use numbers and mathematical concept to solve mathematical problems, as well as ability to analyze data presented in a variety of ways

Verbal Reasoning:

Testing of ones ability to use alphabets and verbal concept to solve English like problems,

Implementation:

To make something that has been officially decided start to happen or be used

Design:

The general arrangement of the different part of something that is made, such as building books, machines etc.

Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

5.1 Summary of Finding

A computerized tutor is a computer system that has both (a) a problem-solving engine that gives it the capacity to generate step-by-step solutions and (b) an enriched interface that allows students to communicate their own step-by-step solutions. These two components enable the system to track students’ problem-solving processes at a detailed level and offer individually tailored feedback and hints. That is, the student takes a step by interacting with the computer interface, and the problem-solving engine judges the appropriateness of that step in the current situation, responding (if necessary) based on its knowledge of what step it would have taken and why. The above discussion suggests that we need a “tool” that will engage students with quantitative and verbal problems covering more than the current week’s topic. Ideally, this tool would encourage students to use variety of skills and to apply these skills in the context of real-world data sets. We propose that cognitive tutors offer one way to do just that. The name “cognitive tutor” refers to a computerized learning environment whose design is based on cognitive principles and whose interaction with students is based on that of a (human) tutor—i.e., making comments when the student errs, answering questions about what to do next, and maintaining a low profile when the student is performing well.

5.2 Conclusions and Recommendations

This paper discusses the design and implementation of a tutor for quantitative and verbal reasoning. Each time students use the tutor, they get exposed to the Big Picture of quantitative and verbal reasoning and see that the same process applies across all problems. In particular, The tutor puts an emphasis on helping students learn how to think and requires them to draw conclusions in context. By adding this tool, we find that primary school teachers can be released from attending to the details of students’ solutions and can focus then on the deeper issues.

Moreover, a controlled experiment showed that, even over short period of use, this tool led to significant improvements in students. In particular, results suggested that after the research, when participants encountered a new problem, they were thinking about it in terms of the appropriate analysis instead of in terms of the subject matter.

Our future plans include extending the use of tutor in the classroom (to more schools all over the country). We also will conduct more research that

Compare tutor with control conditions representative of current typical mathematics and English environment experience . Also, because our focus thus far has been to refine quantitative and verbal reasoning tutor, we have plans to collect additional data to help assess the usability of this tool in terms of human computer
interaction and to make refinements accordingly.