Model-Tracing Based Approach to Intelligent Program Diagnosis

Abstract

Model-tracing based approach to intelligent program diagnosis and tutoring emphasizes the fact that the student’s design decisions are traced as the students develops the program Systems based on this model monitor the user's actions as the moves along the solution path, automatically analyzes partial solutions for semantic errors and misconceptions, and offers guidance whenever he deviates from the correct solution path. In this way, the system always checks to see if the student is following a design path of an idea model. Buggy paths are pruned as soon as they are discovered. Through this approach to automatic diagnosis and tutoring a model-tracing system can (1) diagnose very specific errors and misconceptions, and provide clear advice and explanation within proper and immediate context (2) simplify the engineering of automatic diagnosis by preventing multiple bugs and errors. However, this approach is very directive and interventionist. The users highly constrained in the solutions that can be developed, since he must conforms to the task decomposition and coding sequence enforced by model-tracing systems. This paper critically looks at model-tracing and suggests several solutions and guidelines for bypassing the shortcomings associated with the approach.

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