Volume 7

Volume 7, Number 5

March 12, 2009

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9 pages440 K bytes

Enhancing Decision Sciences Education Through Intelligent Tutors


Owen P. Hall, Jr.
Pepperdine University
West Los Angeles, CA 90245 USA

Kenneth Ko
Pepperdine University
West Los Angeles, CA 90245 USA

Abstract: Globalization is bringing about a radical “rethink” regarding the delivery of graduation management education particularly in the discipline of decision sciences. Today, many students entering an MBA program do not possess an undergraduate degree in business and thus have a limited background in decision sciences. Furthermore, there is a growing trend toward de-emphasizing decision sciences in MBA programs. As a result, many business schools are turning to the Internet to provide “customized” instructional content to insure that graduates possess the requisite technical skills to meet the demands of the marketplace. Intelligent tutors represent one approach to address these challenges. These systems provide customized learning and feedback based on student characteristics and performance. The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to review the current direction in Internet-based intelligent tutors; and 2) to report on a preliminary evaluation regarding the performance and effectiveness of an intelligent tutor system to support decision sciences education. The tentative results from the study indicate that students that used an intelligent tutor in a decision science course significantly increased examination performance.

Keywords: MBA programs, decision sciences, learning support systems, intelligent agents

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Recommended Citation: Hall and Ko (2009). Enhancing Decision Sciences Education Through Intelligent Tutors. Information Systems Education Journal, 7 (5). http://isedj.org/7/5/. ISSN: 1545-679X. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2008: §1515. ISSN: 1542-7382.)

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