Incorporation of agent prompts as scaffolding of reflection in an intelligent learning environment

Recent research has emphasized the importance of reflection for students in an intelligent learning environment. But, researchers have not reached a consensus on the most effective ways to design scaffolding to prompt reflection, nor have they accepted a common mechanism that can explain the effects of scaffolding on reflection. Two types of agent prompts to foster reflection are contrasted in this chapter, both from the perspective of a tutee, differing in their specificity. Generic prompts are content-independent tutee questions, aiming at fostering students' reflection on metacognitive strategies and beliefs regarding their learning-by-teaching activities. Specific prompts, on the other hand, are content-dependent tutee questions that encourage students' reflection on domain-related and task-specific skills, and articulation of their explanatory responses. This chapter describes the design and effect of these two types of agent prompts, adapted to students' learning-by-teaching activities, on the learning outcomes, the elicited levels of reflection, and the self-efficacy of the secondary school students. Copyright © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.