A Gamified Solution to the Cold-Start Problem of Intelligent Tutoring System

Today’s intelligent tutoring systems provide more intelligent but complex services to learners. These systems encounter two critical issues: 1) the initial lack of new learner’s information for running complex services, and 2) new learners failing to actively interact with these complex services due to the initial unfamiliarity. We define such issues as the “cold-start” problem in today’s intelligent tutoring systems, and propose a gamified solution to tackle it. By leveraging on the established MDA model, a three-layer framework with narrative elements and task-oriented elements is designed and implemented in an ITS for mathematics. The preliminary evaluations show its effectiveness, and the proposed solution is generally applicable to other ITS systems.