CHI2012

Ogan, A., Finkelstein, S., Mayfield, E., D'Adamo, C., Matsuda, N., & Cassell, J. (2012 to appear). “Oh, dear Stacy!” Social interaction, elaboration, and learning with teachable agents Proceedings of CHI2012

Abstract: Understanding how children perceive and interact with teachable agents can provide insight into the effects of social interaction and elaboration on learning with intelligent tutoring systems. We describe a think-aloud study where children were instructed to narrate their experience teaching Stacy, an agent who can learn to solve linear equations with the student‟s help. We found treating her as a partner, primarily aligning oneself with Stacy using pronouns like you or we rather than she or it significantly correlates with student learning, as do playful face- threatening comments such as teasing, while elaborate explanations of Stacy‟s behavior in the third-person and formal tutoring statements reduce learning gains. Additionally, we found that the agent‟s correctness was a significant predictor for students shifting away from alignment with the agent.

A PDF version of the paper is available below as an attachment.