Design of agent tutee's question prompts to engage student's role-playing as tutor in a learning-by-teaching agent environment

A learning-by-teaching environment can be used to create a context in which the student can play the role of tutor teaching the agent tutee. Without meaningful feedback from the agent, there is no reason to expect much student's engagement with the teaching interaction and growth in learning. This study tries to investigate the design of agent tutee's question prompts that can engage the student's role-playing as tutor and thereby stimulate reflective knowledge-building in a learning-by-teaching agent environment, Betty's Brain. A pilot study that compares question prompts with self-reflection prompts within the agent environment is undertaken. Question prompts are more specific and concrete questions related to the tutor's teaching and in which the student tutor needs to respond. Self-reflection prompts are more general prompts to stimulate self-reflection. The result gives us some preliminary evidence that the question prompts support on role-playing can be positive in enhancing student's learning when pursing learning-by-teaching activities. Copyright © 2008 International Society of the Learning Sciences.