Human Tutoring vs. Teachable Agent Tutoring: The Effectiveness of "Learning by Teaching" in TA Program on Cognition and Motivation

The researchers in the field of cognitive science and learning science suggest that the teaching activity induces the elaborative and meaningful learning. Actually, lots of research findings have shown the beneficial effect of learning by teaching such as peer tutoring. But peer tutoring has some limitations in the practical learning context. To overcome some limitations, the new concept of "learning by teaching" through the agent called Teachable Agent. The teachable agent is a modified version of traditional intelligent tutoring system that assigns a role of tutor to teach the agent. The teachable agent monitors individual difference and provides a student with a chance for deep learning and motivation to learn by allowing them to play an active role in the process of learning. That is, The teaching activity induces the elaborative and meaningful learning. This study compared the effects of our teachable agent, KORI, and peer tutoring on the cognition and motivation. The field experiment was conducted to examine whether learning by teaching the teachable agent would be more effective than peer tutoring and reading condition. In the experiment, all participants took 30 minutes lesson on rock and rock cycle together to acquire the base knowledge in the domain. After the lesson, participants were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions; reading condition, peer tutoring condition, and teachable agent condition. Next, participants of each condition moved into separated place and performed their own learning activity. After finishing all of the learning activities in each condition, all participants were instructed to rate the interestingness using a 5-point scale on their own learning activity and leaning material, and were given the comprehension test. The results indicated that the teachable agent condition and the peer tutoring condition showed more interests in the learning than the reading condition. It is suggested that teachable agent has more advantages in overcoming the several practical limitations of peer tutoring such as restrictions in time and place, tutor's cognitive burden, unnecessary interaction during peer tutoring. The applicability and prospects of the teachable agent as an efficient substitute for peer tutoring and traditional intelligent tutoring system were also discussed.