Interactive concept maps and learning outcomes in Guru

Concept maps are frequently used in K-12 educational settings. The purpose of this study is to determine whether students\u27 performance on interactive concept map tasks in Guru, an intelligent tutoring system, is related to immediate and delayed learning outcomes. Guru is a dialogue-based system for high-school biology that intersperses concept map tasks within the tutorial dialogue. Results indicated that when students first attempt to complete concept maps, time spent on the maps may be a good indicator of their understanding, whereas the errors they make on their second attempts with the maps may be an indicator of the knowledge they are lacking. This pattern of results was observed for one cycle of testing, but not replicated in a second cycle. Differences in the findings for the two testing cycles are most likely due to topic variations. Copyright © 2012, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved