Plan Ahead: Pricing Its Learner Models

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) are highly adapted to individual learners, and therefore their learner models are central to their operation and account for a large fraction of their development costs. Different learner model architectures may have different development costs, but those costs are not widely reported in the literature. This paper presents individual reports from an anonymous questionnaire sent to ITS professionals in September 2009. The respondents estimated the development costs of recent ITSs and their associated learner models. The resulting data aligns with and amplifies published accounts, as well as contributing new cost information about model types that have not previously appeared in the literature