gram that allows students to draw free-body diagrams on the computer with a mouse and also assess whether or not the resulting diagram is reasonable in terms of the situation described in the problem statement.
(2) ILONA is a program that helps students translate logical statements into mathematical form; the natural language system used in ILONA was also derived from ALBERT.
(3) CICERO is a program that was developed as a part of a series of lessons in the field of Roman law; it allows students to participate in a simulated lawyer-client interview. ALBERT's language system provides an opportunity for dialogue between the student-lawyer and the computer-client.
(4) ECLIPS is a program designed to understand and solve chemistry problems of molarity typed in plain English; it uses both the natural language system and the generic problem-solver from ALBERT.
Although the just described program was aimed at college students, it is important to realize that there are many intelligent tutoring systems that provide coaching at lower grade levels. For example, there is a program for elementary school students that teachers them basic mathematical operations such as addition and subtraction by placing them in the position of being colonists on Mars needing to make some purchases at local stores and shops. The program is called "Shopping on Mars."
With a clearer understanding of the kinds of instruction offered in math to students of varying ages by intelligent tutoring systems, the question that can be asked now is: Can Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) increase students' math performance? This question was investigated by Youngcook (1995) who, as part of his research, designed an ITS in which students assumed very active roles.
Specifically, students were guided to learn certain mathematical operations (solving linear equations) by teaching the computer how to perform them. Regarding the learning experience its...