
F. RAMOS-QUINTANA ET AL.
tively for assistance to solve some troubles, varying the fre-
quency of such requests in depending on the phases, described
before, of the learning process. In this work, we aimed at de-
termining quantitatively the number of requests for assistance
and discovering qualitatively the type of request of assistance,
which can reveal the causes of deadlocks. From a quantitative
point of view, this study revealed that about 30% of exchanged
messages expressed request of assistance, which represents a
very significant percentage, which can affect seriously the per-
formance of the learning process. Meanwhile, from the qualita-
tive point of view, the most important assistance requests were
related with doubts about the use of the computer tool and with
doubts about links, semantically correct, between underlying
concepts, which showed the relevance of the development of
skills to build correct structures.
Derived from these results, we have determined behavior
patterns associated with the phases (the bootstrap phase, the
work phase and the goodbye phase) of the learning process
defined in this work. Based on these behavior patterns, we can
count with the following elements to offer the assistance closer
to the student’s needs: the phase during which the assistance
request occurs and the kind of help that the student is requested.
As mentioned previously, this work is part of our final objec-
tive towards the development of an automatic computer system
capable to assist students when they get stuck during the learn-
ing process in on-line mode.
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