What Level of Tutor Interaction is Best?

This study found that scaffolding compared to hints on demand in an intelligent tutoring system could lead to higher averages on a middle school mathematics post-test. This was especially true for items that were difficult overall on the pre-test. It was also found that less-proficient students benefited from more tutor interaction and more-proficient students benefited from less interaction.

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This image shows the original question that everyone received and the three types of feedback students received depending on the condition they were randomly placed in.

Razzaq, L., Heffernan, N. T., Lindeman, R. W. (2007). What Level of Tutor Interaction is Best? In Luckin & Koedinger (Eds.) Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. IOS Press. pp 222-229.