CircuTutor: Transforming Static Circuit Problems into Intelligent and Dynamic Tutoring

Abstract

Learning direct current circuit concepts requires learners to connect invisible physical quantities, such as current, voltage, resistance, and power, with observable outcomes such as bulb brightness. Conventional textbook materials and general-purpose circuit simulators provide opportunities for problem solving and exploration but offer limited support for explaining why circuit behavior changes or diagnosing the reasoning behind incorrect answers. We present CircuTutor, a circuit-state-driven intelligent tutoring system that transforms static textbook circuit problems into an interactive tutoring workflow. CircuTutor first uses multimodal problem parsing to extract the textbook question, circuit topology, component parameters, switch states, and answer options, which are converted into a structured task and validated through circuit simulation. Learners can then interactively explore the circuit (by changing parameters) and submit an answer while a SPICE-compatible solver computes physically consistent circuit states. After the learner submits an answer, CircuTutor presents a before-and-after circuit state animation corresponding to the selected operation, organizes the simulated state changes into a causal reasoning chain that explains the underlying circuit behavior, maps answer discrepancies to likely misconceptions, and generates adaptive follow-up exercises targeted at the diagnosed misconception. Our experimental results demonstrate that CircuTutor effectively improves conceptual learning and the overall learning experience. The proposed framework demonstrates how simulated circuit states can be transformed into intelligent and interactive tutoring for circuit education, with the potential to generalize to other STEM domains.