A Comparison of Peer Teaching and Teachable Agents for Learning to Reason About Taxonomies

• In Event: Science and Technology

Abstract

Peer tutoring (PT) has proven benefits for learning. A Teachable Agent (TA) is an instructional technology that builds on the idea of PT – but rather than teaching a peer, students teach a computer agent. We ran a study with three 4th-grade classes to test whether TAs help students reason with taxonomic relations. Two classes used TAs and one used PT as a complement to their science curriculum. Both treatments displayed similar learning gains on science content measures, however TA classes showed much larger gains in reasoning about taxonomies. These results suggest that PT and TAs are both effective for learning science content; however, TAs have the special benefit of helping students learn how to reason scientifically.

Authors

• Joe Prempeh

• Doris B. Chin, Stanford University

• Daniel L. Schwartz, Stanford University