What and How You Explain Matters: Inquisitive Teachable Agent Scaffolds Knowledge-Building for Tutor Learning

Students learn by teaching a teachable agent, a phenomenon called tutor learning. Literature suggests that tutor learning happens when students (who tutor the teachable agent) actively reflect on their knowledge when responding to the teachable agent’s inquiries (aka knowledge-building). However, most students often lean towards delivering what they already know instead of reflecting on their knowledge (aka knowledge-telling). The knowledge-telling behavior weakens the effect of tutor learning. We hypothesize that the teachable agent can help students commit to knowledge-building by being inquisitive and asking follow-up inquiries when students engage in knowledge-telling. Despite the known benefits of knowledge-building, no prior work has operationalized the identification of knowledge-building and knowledge-telling features from students’ responses to teachable agent’s inquiries and governed them toward knowledge-building. We propose a Constructive Tutee Inquiry that aims to provide follow-up inquiries to guide students toward knowledge-building when they commit to a knowledge-telling response. Results from an evaluation study show that students who were treated by Constructive Tutee Inquiry not only outperformed those who were not treated but also learned to engage in knowledge-building without the aid of follow-up inquiries over time.