Explicit Reflection in Prolog-Tutor

This paper describes a reflection-based approach for open learner modeling (OLM). Tutoring dialogues are used by learners to explicitly reveal their own knowledge state to themselves. Dewey's theory of reflective thinking is used to create tutorial strategies which govern these dialogues. Drake's specification of critical thinking, associated to a defined set of skills, is used to define tutoring tactics implementing these strategies. The main contribution of this approach to OLM is that it provides a set of principled and reusable tutorial strategies and tactics to promote reflection, as they are based on domain independent theories. Furthermore, an evaluation of such a principled approach to OLM is straightforward in certain cases, as it refers to theories which already provide evaluation criteria. The approach is integrated in Prolog-Tutor, an existing intelligent tutoring system for Logic Programming. This paper presents a qualitative study of the resulting system, based on think-aloud protocols. A result analysis reveals that explicitly fostering reflection supports reflection based OLM and provides landmarks to explain its manifestations. However, the results also suggest that this openness may be less helpful when used by learners who have already honed a high level of proficiency in logic programming.