Intelligent Tutoring Systems

The first International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) was held ten years ago in Montreal (ITS ’88). It was so well received by the international community that the organizers decided to do it again in Montreal four years later, in 1992, and then again in 1996. ITS ’98 differs from the previous ones in that this is the first time the conference has been held outside of Montreal, and it’s only been two years (not four) since the last one. One interesting aspect of the ITS conferences is that they are not explicitly bound to some organization (e.g., IEEE or AACE). Rather, the founder of these conferences, Claude Frasson, started them as a means to congregate researchers actively involved in the ITS field and provide a forum for presentation and debate of the most currently challenging issues. Thus the unifying theme is science. This year’s “hot topics” differ from those in the earlier ITS conferences as they reflect ever changing trends in ITS research. A few of the issues being examined at ITS ’98 include: Web based tutoring systems, deploying ITS in the real world, tutoring and authoring tools, architectures, and knowledge structure and representation.