Probably not, but it can enhance student learning and guide self-paced study. It isn't getting the amount of hype Windows 95 did, but a tutorial software program under development at WCER is nonetheless helping students think and work more productively. Like a human tutor, it monitors their problem-solving strategies, offers advice, and tracks their progress. UW-Madison Education Professor Sharon Derry and her team are studying the interaction between students and human tutors in order to build software that behaves like effective human tutors behave. No matter what line of work we're in, we continually solve problems, little and big.
Many adults have difficulty solving complex arithmetic word problems.
Knowing how to break down complicated problems into manageable chunks really helps. That's what TiPS teaches students to do. Derry says that textbooks use only a limited set of schemas, and they often use key words that make the desired operation overly obvious. The problems rarely achieve the complexity students will face in real life. Because basic schema knowledge has not been taught in textbooks and schools, most adults aren't able to solve complex word problems.