An emotionally intelligent tutoring system

Abstract

Recent explorations in the field of human computer interaction has led to innovations in the area of intelligent tutoring systems. Prior computer systems that have tried to “tutor” users have failed, since they could not replace a human teacher. Emotional intelligence, however, can be incorporated into such systems for better assistance. To accomplish this, concepts of emotion recognition must be integrated into an intelligent tutoring system. Such a system could deliver a course in different teaching styles, so the student can easily understand the course material. Also, a more sophisticated tutoring avatar could be developed, which would adopt a better teaching style for a particular subject and then change the style dynamically according to emotional feedback given by the student. Based on response time, facial expressions or feedback obtained by a few questions, analysis can be made and the interface can be changed according to the needs of the user. This paper proposes an emotionally intelligent tutoring system (EITS), which could be used to detect and analyze the emotional state of a learner and respond in a way similar to human tutors.