SOFTWARE ENGINEERING METHODS FOR RE-USE OF COMPONENTS AND DESIGN IN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS

摘要

Developing intelligent tutoring systems from scratch every time one changes the platform or exchanges the knowledge domain takes an enormous amount of both time and money. The authors introduce methods from software engineering into the AIED (Artificial Intelligence in Education) community that can help to reduce the amount of resources that has to be put into the maintenance of educational systems when the requirements change (such as porting the system from one specific platform to a web-based system or extending its functionality). They present techniques for the re-use of essential parts of large existing systems that are difficult to change (called legacy systems), as well as approaches to provide a general structure and concrete components for specific uses, which can simply be used in (plugged into) new systems. They also show the possibility of restructuring existing design and implementation to introduce new functionality and more easily increase flexibility.