Modeling affective responses in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

An important trend in the development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) has been that of integrating characteristics proper of human tutoring into their performance, with the aim of providing the student with a more personalized and friendly environment for learning according to his traits and progress. These characteristics may give the student the sensation that there is "someone" behind the program who follows his learning development and cares about him as a human tutor would. One of the most important highlights of personal tutoring is that of recognizing the student's affective state and reacting accordingly by expressing the pedagogical movements in an affectively suitable way. In this paper, a proposal for an affective behavior model to be used in ITS is presented. The aim of this model is to provide students with a suitable response from a pedagogical and affective viewpoint.