In this paper we investigate how competition among tutees in the context of learning by teaching affects tutors’ engagement as well as tutor learning. We conducted this investigation by incorporating ...a competitive Game Show feature into an online learning environment where students learn to solve algebraic equations by teaching a synthetic peer, called SimStudent. In the Game Show, pairs of SimStudents trained by students beforehand competed against each other by solving challenging problems to attain higher ratings. The results of a classroom study with 141 7th through 9th grade students showed the following: (1) Students improved their proficiency to solve equations after teaching SimStudent, but there was no observed improvement in their conceptual understanding. (2) Overall, the competitive Game Show promoted students’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivations—when the competitive Game Show was available, students’ engagement in tutoring (intrinsic motivation) was increased; students who arguably had a higher desire to win strategically selected opponents with lower proficiency for an easy win (extrinsic motivation). (3) The availability of the competitive Game Show did not affect tutor learning; there was no notable correlation between students’ motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic) and tutor learning. Based on these findings, we propose design improvements to increase tutor learning.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer high quality, free courses to anyone with an Internet connection. However, these courses may be relatively inaccessible to the large global population of ...students who are English Language Learners (ELLs). Current efforts to understand student motivation in MOOCs do not take into account the specific needs of ELL students. Through interviews with 12 ELL online students, and a survey with 20,084 ELL respondents, we investigate ELL students’ motivations for taking online courses. We show that ELL students’ motivations are highly socialized strategies for achieving long-term goals of economic, social, and geographic mobility. Although research studies show that ELLs interact sparingly with other students in MOOCs, we present evidence that they have unmet needs for interaction, and discuss how student interaction systems in MOOCs can better address these needs. Finally, we show evidence that ELLs deliberately use English MOOCs to improve their language skills, even when the content is not language-related. This implies that meeting ELL students’ needs and access to MOOCs involves translating MOOCs to their local languages, but also providing language support in English-language MOOCs.
English Language Learners (ELLs) are a substantial portion of the students who enroll in MOOCs. In order to fulfill the promise of MOOCs – i.e., making higher education accessible to everyone with an ...internet connection – appropriate interventions should be offered to students who struggle with the language of course content. Through the analysis of clickstream log data gathered from two MOOC courses deployed on Coursera, Introduction to Psychology and Statistical Thermodynamics, we show that compared to native English speakers, ELL students have distinct behavioral patterns in how they engage with MOOC content including increased interaction with content that contains text, increased seeking away from content without visual support, and decreased video play rates. These patterns are expressed differently in response to different types of course content and domains. Our findings not only suggest more fine-grained methods for automatically identifying students who need language interventions, but also have further implications for the design of language support interventions and MOOC videos.
This article describes an advanced learning technology used to investigate hypotheses about learning by teaching. The proposed technology is an instance of a teachable agent, called SimStudent, that ...learns skills (e.g., for solving linear equations) from examples and from feedback on performance. SimStudent has been integrated into an online, gamelike environment in which students act as "tutors" and can interactively teach SimStudent by providing it with examples and feedback. We conducted 3 classroom "in vivo" studies to better understand how and when students learn (or fail to learn) by teaching. One of the strengths of interactive technologies is their ability to collect detailed process data on the nature and timing of student activities. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth analysis across 3 studies to understand the underlying cognitive and social factors that contribute to tutor learning by making connections between outcome and process data. The results show several key cognitive and social factors that are correlated with tutor learning. The accuracy of students' responses (i.e., feedback and hints), the quality of students' explanations during tutoring, and the appropriateness of tutoring strategy (i.e., problem selection) all positively affected SimStudent's learning, which further positively affected students' learning. The results suggest that implementing adaptive help for students on how to tutor and solve problems is a crucial component for successful learning by teaching.
Access to literacy is critical to children's futures, but formal education may be insufficient for fostering early literacy, especially in low-resource contexts. Educational technologies used at home ...may be able to help, but it is unclear whether or how children (and families) will use such technologies at home in rural communities, particularly in low-literate families. In this paper, we investigate these questions with a voice-based literacy technology deployed with families in 8 rural communities in Côte d'Ivoire for 4 months. We use interviews and observations with 37 families to investigate motivations, methods, and barriers for rural families' engagement with a literacy technology accessible via feature phones. We contribute insights into how families view digital literacy as a learning goal, leverage networks of supporters, and over time, transition from explicit to implicit support for children's learning.
Tablet-based educational technologies provide a supplement to traditional classroom-based early literacy education, especially in regions with limited schooling resources. Prior work has probed how ...children generally interact with and learn from these technologies, however, there is limited research on student engagement with applications that utilize valuable input techniques such as automatic handwriting and speech recognition. In our study, we designed and field-tested early literacy speech and handwriting recognition applications with the primary aim of maximizing student engagement. We designed the applications based on prior research insights and classroom observations from our target population and field-tested the applications with 283 children living in rural Tanzania. We found that observing a small set of classrooms can produce design insights that increase engagement on tablet-based learning systems on a much larger scale. We also demonstrate the importance of domain familiarity in students' choice to persist through activities while learning with technology.
This paper describes an application of a machine-learning agent, SimStudent, as a teachable peer learner that allows a student to learn by teaching. SimStudent has been integrated into APLUS ...(Artificial Peer Learning environment Using SimStudent), an on-line game-like learning environment. The first classroom study was conducted in local public high schools to test the effectiveness of APLUS for learning linear algebra equations. In the study, learning by teaching (i.e., APLUS) was compared with learning by tutored-problem solving (i.e., Cognitive Tutor). The results show that the prior knowledge has a strong influence on tutor learning – for students with insufficient training on the target problems, learning by teaching may have limited benefits compared to learning by tutored problem solving. It was also found that students often use inappropriate problems to tutor SimStudent that did not effectively facilitate the tutor learning.
"You give a little of yourself" Madaio, Michael A.; Kamath, Vikram; Yarzebinski, Evelyn ...
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies,
07/2019
Conference Proceeding
Odprti dostop
Low levels of childhood literacy in global contexts may be mitigated by educational technologies, however, these technologies often rely on parents of sufficient literacy to effectively support their ...children. Given low levels of adult literacy in many low-resource contexts, we investigate the nature of low-literate adult support for children's use of a literacy technology designed to foster early literacy precursors. We deployed an interactive voice response (IVR) system with 38 families in a rural village in Côte d'Ivoire using the IVR for 5 weeks in their homes. Using call log data and grounded theory analyses of IVR observations and interviews, we find evidence that families leverage complex support networks where family members support children's use of the IVR in different ways, via a collective network of intermediaries. These results suggest opportunities to scaffold low-literate family supporters for educational technologies.
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