Skill Diaries: Can Periodic Self-assessment Improve Students’ Learning with an Intelligent Tutoring System?

Abstract

Metacognitive theories point out that self-assessment can facilitate in-depth reflection and help direct effective self-regulated learning. Yet, not much work has investigated the relationship between students’ self-assessment and learning outcomes in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). This paper investigates this relationship with classrooms using the Geometry Cognitive Tutor. We designed a skill diary that helps students take advantage of the tutor’s open learner model to periodically self-assess their geometry skill. We investigated whether it can support students’ self-assessment and learning. In an experiment with 122 high school students, students in the experimental group were prompted periodically to fill out the skill diaries, whereas the control group answered general questions that did not involve active self-assessment. The experimental group performed better on a post-test of geometry skill. Further, the skill diaries helped lower-performing students to significantly improve their self-assessment accuracy and learning outcomes. This paper helps establish the important role of self-assessment in enhancing students’ domain-level learning in ITSs.