An Intelligent Tutoring System for Adult Literacy Enhancement

This proposal presents the opportunity to apply our existing experience, research, and technology in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) and pedagogical techniques to the adult literacy problem. ITSs assess, model, diagnose, and automatically develop a tailored course of remedial instruction for individuals. ITSs emphasize custom instruction tailored to the particular individual. Our approach includes theoretical, pedagogical, empirical, and practical philosophies. We emphasize the use of real-world, adult-applicable reading material, chosen for its appropriate reading difficulty and relevancy to the end user. This is facilitated by the capability of our ITS to receive a document (which includes multi-media) from Naval personnel (non-programmers) and automatically extract the information from it for reading practice, exercises, and assessment. In Phase I, we will develop a prototype (ITS) for adult literacy enhancement for testing and evaluation. The use of an ITS for reading enhancement will achieve many of the same benefits as one-on-one instruction. When ITSs are enhanced with interactive multimedia, students demonstrate greater motivation during training and greater retention of course material. Thus, an ITS provides instruction that is at once cost-effective and potentially superior to traditional reading teaching methods. We have used this ITS approach with much success in other training domains.