Learning by Teaching Support Environment based on Teaching Assistant Activities with Teacher Agent

Abstract

A learning environment where human learners learn by teaching computer agents generally has some advantages for their effective learning. One of the expected advantages is the learners can be aware of the related knowledge and the strategy of problem solving. However some human learners cannot succeed in teaching the agents as a learner even if these learners can completely resolve the problems. It is because these learners cannot diagnose the understanding level of the agents. Even if these learners can teach the answer of the problems, they cannot identify the causes of the agents’ mistakes and lead them to the correct solution. In this paper, to support their learning by teaching, we propose a new learning environment where human learners learn by teaching as a teaching assistant. In this environment, these learners can receive some assistance from the teacher agent. The teacher agent supports the learners in diagnosing the causes of mistakes based on the related knowledge and the strategy of the problem solving, when the learners become stuck. Our preliminary evaluation shows the advantage to enable learners to be aware of the related knowledge and strategy.