AIED2015

Yarzebinski, E., Ogan, A., Rodrigo, M. M. T., & Matsuda, N. (2015; accepted). Understanding Students’ Use of Code-switching in a Learning by Teaching Technology. In C. Conati & N. Heffernan (Eds.), Proceedings of the international conference on artificial intelligence in education.

Abstract. Personalized learning systems have shown significant learning gains when used in formal classroom teaching. Systems that use pedagogical agents for teaching have become popular, but typically their design does not account for multilingual classrooms. We investigated one such system in classrooms in the Philippines to see if and how students used code-switching when providing explanations of algebra problem solving. We found significant amounts of code-switching and explored cognitive and social factors such as explanation quality and affective valence that serve as evidence for code-switching motiva-tions and effects. These results uncover complex social and cognitive interac-tions that occur during learning interactions with a virtual peer, and call for mo-re affordances to support multilingual students.

A PDF version of the manuscript is available below.