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Cognitive Tutors have been successful in raising students' math test scores in high school and middle-school classrooms, but their development has traditionally required considerable time and expertise. With the Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT), creating Cognitive Tutors is both easier for experts and possible for novices in cognitive science. The tools draw on ideas of programming by demonstration, structured editing, and others.

Project News

CTAT 2.6 Released June 3, 2009

CTAT version 2.6 is available for download. CTAT 2.6 includes many new features and bug fixes for the authoring tools and both Flash and Java widgets. Some highlights:

  • Logging error-checking for Java tutors
  • Changes to formula grammar, which affects how the formulas in expression-matching steps are parsed and interpreted
  • New CTAT formulas for expression matching
  • An updated Jess Eclipse plugin
  • Tutor-performed actions for Jess cognitive tutors
  • A student-starts-here feature for making any state a starting state and creating worked examples
  • A Flash feature called "the scrim", a partially transparent screen which appears when the tutor is not yet ready for a student to start working on a problem or when the tutor disconnects from the Tutoring Service. Whenever the scrim is visible, all tutor components are disabled.
  • A new Flash component, CommImage
  • Updated Flash example tutors, including a new one for tutoring conversion factors

... and much more!

Read more in the release notes, or download CTAT 2.6.

Last call for applications: the 5th Annual PSLC Summer School at CMU March 29, 2009

Scholarships are still available for the 5th Annual PSLC LearnLab Summer School to be held at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

  • When: Monday, July 13, 2008 - Friday, July 17, 2008
  • Cost: $950 General Fee / $250 for Graduate Students. Many scholarships available (see application.

From the Call for Applications: “We invite applications for participation in an intensive 1-week summer school on technology-enhanced learning experiments and building intelligent tutoring systems. The summer school will provide a conceptual background and considerable hands-on experience in developing, running and analyzing technology-enhanced learning experiments.”

Come build tutors with us!

CTAT 2.5.1 Released November 24, 2008

CTAT version 2.5.1 is available for download. CTAT 2.5.1 is primarily a bug-fix release. Some significant changes are:

  • Improved hint-after-error policy
  • Millisecond timestamps in logging: both Java and Flash tutors now log timestamps for “tool” and “tutor” messages with millisecond-level precision
  • Tutor-performed steps will now use selection, action, and input from the “matcher” column of the Edit Student Input Matching dialog whenever the matcher is either the Exact matcher or the Formula matcher with an operator of “=”.
  • CommTextArea, CommTextInput background color is now more easily configurable in Flash CS3. The background color of these components defaults to white.
  • CommTextArea’s “html” parameter now enables HTML rendering within the component.
  • CommShell values for correct/incorrect/hint color no longer default to black in Flash CS3.

Read more in the release notes, or download CTAT 2.5.1.

CTAT 2.5 Released September 8, 2008

CTAT version 2.5 is available for download. In addition to bug fixes, new features include:

  • Windows Vista-compatible installer
  • Support for ordering constraints in example-tracing tutors
    • Link-group editor for setting and editing ordering constraints
    • Link-group visualization in the behavior graph
  • Revamped student-input matching dialog
  • Optional steps, and support for minimum and maximum numbers of times steps should be performed.
  • Even better support for formulas

Read more in the release notes, or download CTAT 2.5.

CTAT 2.4 Released June 20, 2008

CTAT version 2.4 is available for download. New features include:

  • Improved logging from Java and Flash tutors
  • Better support for formulas
  • Three new Java widgets: DorminPicture, DorminAudioButton, and DorminDrawingPad
  • Bug fixes involving the behavior of example-tracing tutors

Read more in the release notes, or download CTAT 2.4.

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