Re: [Tuxmath-devel] Personalized, adaptive game-play to improve learning in Tuxmath

[Siddharth K. <sid...@gm...>]

Hi Tim and everyone,

2. The arcade games are supposed to be an absolute scale, and so there
> should
> not be any mechanisms that adjust task difficulty. In principle, you could
> get
> around this by adjusting how tuxmath does scoring, but I would be very
> cautious about doing this until you have considerable confidence that you
> can
> measure performance accurately. So you would want to disable any fancy
> mechanisms in the arcade games.
>
I do not intend to adjust task difficulty. My initial idea is to create
dependencies between the topics, like multiplication requires knowledge of
addition; but on a more *granular *basis by making distinction between
different types of multiplication, based on the digits in the answer, the
digits in the operands, and also the position of the operands.


> Another thing you should know about is the tux4kids-admin project, which is
> designed to build infrastructure for teachers to use tux4kids in more of a
> "lesson" environment. I implemented a first stab at this, but it never got
> to
> the point of being very user-friendly. There has been a more recent effort
> at
> it, but I am not sure of its current status. But you may want to take a
> peek
> at that work to see how your thoughts might relate.
>
I have used tux4kids-admin tool, but there is not enough documentation and I
haven't gone through the code to completely understand what parts are still
missing. Imo, my idea would relate to this module by allowing assessment of
student's performance in a more accurate manner.

Link to my proposal:
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2011/sidi/2001.
Feedbacks welcome.

Thanks,
Siddharth
On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 9:14 PM, Tim Holy <ho...@wu...> wrote:

> Hi Siddarth,
>
> On Thursday, April 07, 2011 10:21:36 am Siddharth Kothari wrote:
> > If the devs. of Tuxmath agree, I plan to submit a SoC proposal on the
> idea
> > of providing "an adaptive game-play to improve learning" in Tuxmath under
> > PSU <http://summer.cs.pdx.edu/ideas>. The reason for choosing PSU is
> that
> > they focus on academic-oriented projects and consider how valuable the
> the
> > project could be to the larger open source community.
> >
> > *Short description*: Tux, of Math command is an open-source educational
> > game for learning Mathematics. Since the game is quite popular and used
> by
> > many schools, my idea focuses on improving the learning of a
> > player/student by providing a personalized, adaptive game-play. This is
> > done by modelling the student's knowledge state using a Bayesian network.
> > This also helps a teacher/supervisor to be provided with a detailed
> > assessment about a particular student's strengths and weaknesses in
> > individual concepts (read lessons).
>
> I think this is an interesting idea. Tuxmath currently has a form of
> "feedback," adjusting the comet speed depending on how the student has
> performed recently. But it is very primitive (I can say that because I
> wrote
> it myself :-) ). There is plenty of room for improvement, and the idea of
> using Bayesian methods has potential.
>
> Currently, I think the general principle is that:
> 1. Adaptive mechanisms are desirable in the "training academy" lessons;
> 2. The arcade games are supposed to be an absolute scale, and so there
> should
> not be any mechanisms that adjust task difficulty. In principle, you could
> get
> around this by adjusting how tuxmath does scoring, but I would be very
> cautious about doing this until you have considerable confidence that you
> can
> measure performance accurately. So you would want to disable any fancy
> mechanisms in the arcade games.
>
> Another thing you should know about is the tux4kids-admin project, which is
> designed to build infrastructure for teachers to use tux4kids in more of a
> "lesson" environment. I implemented a first stab at this, but it never got
> to
> the point of being very user-friendly. There has been a more recent effort
> at
> it, but I am not sure of its current status. But you may want to take a
> peek
> at that work to see how your thoughts might relate.
>
> In any event, I like this general direction of investigation, but I cannot
> promise to be able to supply mentoring time---I haven't had time for
> tux4kids
> for far longer than I'd like, and so I won't make any promises.
>
> Best,
> --Tim
>
>
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