An expert system development environment for introductory AI course projects

Abstract

This paper describes the use of an expert system development environment as a teaching environment to support a cognitive simulation project in an undergraduate introductory AI course. The use of this development environment, which was originally intended for experienced production system programmers, as a teaching tool for novices, presented challenges on a number of levels. This paper describes the development environment and demonstrates how it can be used to help a student understand programming lesson points, as well as how a student can use it to better understand how a particular system is behaving and whether it matches the students understanding of what it is supposed to be doing.