A computer-based tutoring system for visual-spatial skills: dynamically adapting to the user´s developmental range

A basic principle of applied developmental psychology is that teaching is maximally effective when it is targeted to a student´s developmental level. However, it is difficult for a single teacher to deliver the curriculum to the individualized needs of twenty or more students in a typical classroom. Even a single individual will vary in competence within a domain under the influence of complex and interrelated dynamically changing variables such as social context, motivation, and physiological state. This project represents an attempt to leverage technology to help educators overcome these challenges, by providing a computer system that supports the efficient training of key cognitive faculties such as visual-spatial ability. The core of the system is an automated tutor that can dynamically track and adapt to a user´s fluctuating skill level in a given knowledge domain. Rasch modeling provides tools for measuring the relative complexity of specific tasks and associating these with specific user abilities. Armed with this knowledge, the tutoring system can assess a user´s ability in real time and generate educational tasks that are levelled appropriately.