Iterative development and validation of a simulation-based medical tutor

An iterative development cycle approach is described for building an intelligent tutor. This approach is particularly valuable since most tutoring systems require direct interaction with end-users. One of the advantages of this approach is that feedback from experts about the early prototype training system can be used to refine the questions asked during validation studies. The validation process changes at each cycle of the development process in order to define the scope of the project, correctly implement the domain models and verify the effectiveness of the resulting system. This paper describes development of a real-time medical training system and the iterative development approach that was used for its implementation and evaluation.