2.3. Message types

The Tutor Message format describes four message types used to describe a tutoring session. These are:

context_message: establishes the context for the following sequence of messages
tool_message: describes a student's interaction with the "tool"
tutor_message: describes the tutor's response to the student's action
message: describes other information not adequately captured by the other message types; CTAT, for example, uses this message type for replay.

These messages must appear within a <tutor_related_message_sequence> element, as shown below.

Figure 2. Message types, which appear within the tutor_related_message_sequence

Student action, tutor response: tool-tutor message pairs

A common unit of interaction is a student action with the tool and a tutor response for that action. This sequence is represented by the tool and tutor message pair.

	Note
	As of September 2007 (DataShop v2.3), the DataShop will import unpaired tool messages (a tool message without a tutor message), but not unpaired tutor messages (a tutor message without a tool message). Previously (DataShop v1.0–2.2), DataShop did not import unpaired tutor or tool messages.

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2.2. Root element	Home	2.4. <context_message>