This chapter addresses the impact of one unusual but potentially very important use of microcomputers – their use as intelligent tutors – on classroom structure and functioning. Specifically, it discusses the impact of an artificially intelligent tutor on both teachers' and students' behavior. Ideally, intelligent computer-based tutors are designed to follow what a student is trying to do, diagnose the difficulties the student is experiencing, and present instruction relevant to those difficulties, providing individually tailored learning experiences that proceed at a pace determined by the student's capabilities (Anderson, 1984). Thus, the use of intelligent tutors seems to hold real promise for improving schooling as we know it today. The cost of the development of such software is high, and some of it currently requires rather expensive hardware to operate. However, there is reason to believe that within the relatively near future the cost of artificially intelligent tutors for educational purposes will no longer be prohibitive (Lesgold & Lesgold, 1984). Thus, intelligent tutoring is a potentially revolutionary educational innovation that may well become a practical reality from a technical and a fiscal perspective in the foreseeable future.

Some of the very characteristics that make the artificially intelligent tutor an innovation with real promise also make it likely to bring about important changes in traditional classroom relationships and practices. For example, teachers whose students are using an artificially intelligent tutor, like teachers whose students have access to wide-area computer networks such as the Internet, need to adjust to the fact that their classrooms now contain another source of expertise, which students may choose to turn to before consulting them.