This is a collection of essays on issues related to the evolutionary design and the practical future of intelligent tutoring systems. Following in the tradition of Foundations of Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Lessons Learned, this volume examines some of the visions and near-term issues that have been further explored and better defined since those groundbreaking books first appeared. Questions addressed in this volume include:
*How can knowledge bases generate explanations?
*Will case-based reasoning techniques be worth pursuing in the ITS framework?
*Will high performance skills be successfully taught in an ITS design?
*Are there dimensions of ITS design which the research laboratories are ignoring, and ignoring at the customer's peril?
Of particular importance to those engaged in research and development, this book will be of value to all who wish to apprise themselves of the advances being made in the rapidly evolving field of intelligent tutoring systems.

This is a collection of essays on issues related to the evolutionary design and the practical future of intelligent tutoring systems. Following in the tradition of Foundations of Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Lessons Learned, this volume examines some of the visions and near-term issues that have been further explored and better defined since those groundbreaking books first appeared. Questions addressed in this volume include:
*How can knowledge bases generate explanations?
*Will case-based reasoning techniques be worth pursuing in the ITS framework?
*Will high performance skills be successfully taught in an ITS design?
*Are there dimensions of ITS design which the research laboratories are ignoring, and ignoring at the customer's peril?
Of particular importance to those engaged in research and development, this book will be of value to all who wish to apprise themselves of the advances being made in the rapidly evolving field of intelligent tutoring systems.

The first International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) was held ten years ago in Montreal (ITS '88). It was so well received by the international community that the organizers decided to do it again in Montreal four years later, in 1992, and then again in 1996. ITS '98 differs from the previous ones in that this is the first time the conference has been held outside of Montreal, and it's only been two years (not four) since the last one. One interesting aspect of the ITS conferences is that they are not explicitly bound to some organization (e.g., IEEE or AACE). Rather, the founder of these conferences, Claude Frasson, started them as a means to congregate researchers actively involved in the ITS field and provide a forum for presentation and debate of the most currently challenging issues. Thus the unifying theme is science. This year's "hot topics" differ from those in the earlier ITS conferences as they reflect ever changing trends in ITS research. A few of the issues being examined at ITS '98 include: Web based tutoring systems, deploying ITS in the real world, tutoring and authoring tools, architectures, and knowledge structure and representation.