An intelligent tutoring and assessing system for prolog programming

We present a system for tutoring and assessing Prolog programming skills. The system gives the student programming exercises and asks him to do the exercises in the form of Prolog programs. The system analyses the student's programs and gives comments, suggestions or corrections when appropriate. If the student is not able to program on his own, he is given directive guidance in the form of program templates. The system also assesses the student's knowledge state of Prolog programming skills on the basis of his programming activities and adapts the tutoring process and the progression of learning to the student's needs. We propose an approach to error diagnosis which does not rely on buggy rules as mane programming tutors do. The student program is interpreted using the general Prolog programming knowledge and then compared to the standard program. Any discrepancies between them provide opportunities for tutoring interventions.