Research Methods Tutor: Evaluation of a dialogue-based tutoring system in the classroom

Research Methods Tutor (RMT) is a dialogue-based intelligent tutoring system for use in conjunction with undergraduate psychology research methods courses. RMT includes five topics that correspond to the curriculum of introductory research methods courses: ethics, variables, reliability, validity, and experimental design. We evaluated the effectiveness of the RMT system in the classroom using a nonequivalent control group design. Students in three classes (n = 83) used RMT, and students in two classes (n = 53) did not use RMT. Results indicated that the use of RMT yielded strong learning gains of 0.75 standard deviations above classroom instruction alone. Further, the dialogue-based tutoring condition of the system resulted in higher gains than did the textbook-style condition (CAI version) of the system. Future directions for RMT include the addition of new topics and tutoring elements.