Representation of analogies found in human tutoring sessions

We describe the use of analogies in 75 one-on-one tutoring sessions with first-year medical students carried on by two professors of physiology at Rush Medical College. Analogies were not very frequent, but were extremely effective when they were used. We have analyzed the goals, the topics, and the discourse strategies for proposing analogies. We have also studied the ways that the tutors follow up on these analogies and clarify them when necessary, with the goal of implementing analogies in our intelligent tutoring system, CIRCSIM-Tutor. Our knowledge representation scheme is based on Gentner’s theory and Forbus ’ MAC/FAC model, which allows for structural mappings between analogies