Affiliations: ARIES Laboratory, Department of Computer Science,
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. [email protected],
[email protected]; http://www.cs.usask.ca/research/research_groups/aries/
Abstract: Inspectable student models focus on the idea of letting students and
teachers interact with the representation of the student that the system
maintains. Both humans and the system can benefit from this interaction. By
externalizing the student model and making it an object for inspection, several
representational and interaction issues arise. This paper presents ViSMod
(Visualization of Bayesian Student Models) an integrated tool to visualize and
inspect distributed Bayesian student models. Using ViSMod, students and
teachers can understand, explore, inspect, and modify Bayesian student models.
ViSMod offers a practical tool that helps students and teachers to engage in
negotiated assessment processes. Student models in ViSMod follow the Bayesian
belief net backbone structure proposed by Reye (1996), which describes both
cognitive and social aspects of the student. In addition, we report on a
usability study of the ViSMod tool and an exploratory study focused on the
effects of employing various levels of guidance and support in the way students
interact with inspectable Bayesian student models.