Gaze Feedback and Pedagogical Suggestions in Collaborative Learning

Learning by doing, such as when learners give explanations to peer learners in collaborative learning, is known to be an effective strategy for gaining knowledge. This study used two types of facilitation technology in a simple explanation task to experimentally investigate those influence on the performance of understanding self’s concept during collaborative explanation activity. Dyads were given a topic about cognitive psychology and were required to use two different theoretical concepts, each of which was provided separately to one or the other of them, and explain the topic to each other. Two types of facilitation were examined: (1) use of a pedagogical conversational agent (PCA) and (2) visual gaze feedback using eye-track sensing. The PCA was expected to enable greater support of task-based activity (task-work) and visual gaze feedback to support learner coordination within the dyads (team-work). Results show that gaze feedback was effective when there was no PCA, and the PCA was effective when there was no gaze feedback on explaining self’s concept. This work provides preliminary implications on designing collaborative learning technologies using tutoring agents and sensing technology.