INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION - A WEB-BASED INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEM ON TEACHING AND LEARNING ELECTRICAL PROJECT

Resume
Electrical activity is extremely broad and distinct, requiring by one hand, a deep knowledge on rules, regulations, materials, equipments, technical solutions and technologies and assistance in several areas, as electrical equipment, telecommunications, security and efficiency and rational use of energy, on the other hand, also requires other skills, depending on the specific projects to be implemented, being this knowledge a characteristic that belongs to the professionals with relevant experience, in terms of complexity and specific projects that were made.

Goals
Development of a tool with strong skills in support:
 Education
 Conducting Electrical Projects
Users
 Students of secondary and higher education
 Teachers of secondary and higher education
 Electrotechnic engineers
 Electricians and other staff of the area

Platform for Teaching and Learning
Module Tutor
Endows the system with relevant knowledge to training in the field of electrical project, but also confers sensitivity to the difficulties and skills demonstrated by the trainee and the ability to react accordingly.
It is a system capable of transmitting and assess knowledge similar to a human tutor.
 Firefox Support Formation
Complement the module tutor and add differentiation and value-added solutions to the application.
Allows insert and the consultation of several objects related electrical activity.
 Used Technologies
• Web Technologies (HTML, PHP, DOM, Javascript, Ajax)
• Systems Managers Databases (DOM com Javascript e Php)
• XML
• Platform Java ou .NET
• Web Servers (Php – Phpdev e TomCat)
• Adaptive Hypermedia Architecture – AHA

Conclusions
An Intelligent Tutor in this specific field will fill a gap in the learning process structure, performing a function not fulfilled by anyone. It will also complement and improve the tutoring process offered by other instructional techniques in the following aspects:
• the experts in the field of electrical installation design tend to be rare and usually they are not available to assist novice designers;
• the training quality suffers from the lack of an evaluation mechanism and the fact that the same training program is applied to all the participants;
• the trainees do not have to leave their working place since the tutor can be used through the internet.
The teaching model proposed is able to ensure adequate support of the trainees in the acquisition of the different types of knowledge and expertise required to perform successfully the design of electrical installations, since it defines different teaching technologies appropriated to the acquisition of the heterogenic types of knowledge involved.
The use of these Tutors can therefore improve electrical installation designers' formation, which is critical due to the lack of well-trained technicians in this area.