Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This paper examines performance on an intelligent tutoring system designed to teach students in a first-year algebra class to solve simple linear equations. W e emphasize the effects of requiring students to complete low-level arithmetic operations on higher-level strategic decisions. On aX + b = c problems, students who were required to perform arithmetic became less likely to solve such problems by first dividing by a than students who were not required to perform the arithmetic required to carry out the ojjeration. The shift away from this strategy is in keeping with the predictions of ACT-R. W e discuss these results in terms of the educational implications of providing computational tools to students learning basic mathematics.