The Transition From Intelligent to Affective Tutoring System: A Review and Open Issues

The swelling use of computerized learning, accompanied by the rapid growth of information technology has become a surge of interest in the research community. Consequently, several technologies have been developed to maintain and promote computerized learning. In this study, we provided an in-depth analysis of two of the prominent computerized learning systems i.e., Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) and Affective Tutoring System (ATS). An ITS is one of the training software systems, which use intelligent technologies to provide personalized learning content to students based on their learning needs with the aim of enhancing the individualized learning experience. Recently, researchers have demonstrated that the affect or emotional states of a student have an impact on the overall performance of his/her learning, which introduces a new trend of ITS development termed as ATS, which is the extended research of the previous one. Although there have been several studies on these tutoring systems, however, none of them has comprehensively analyzed both systems, particularly the transition from ITS to ATS. Therefore, this study examines these two tutoring systems more inclusively with regards to their architectures, models, and techniques and approaches used by taking into consideration the related researches conducted between 2014 to 2019. A crucial finding from the study is that ATS can be a promising tutoring system for the next generation learning environment by affiliating proper emotion recognition channels, along with computational intelligence approaches. Finally, this study concludes with research challenges and possible future directions and trends.