Benefits Seen for Students Teaching Virtual Pupils
Scientists Say Their 'Teachable Agents' Seem to Spur Effort, Motivation
Educators have long held that peer tutoring can help students learn, and emerging research on students working with computer characters points to one possible reason why: Teaching begets learning for the teachers.
Researchers at Stanford University’s AAA Lab and Vanderbilt University’s Teachable Agents Group call it the “protégé effect,” which posits that students will work harder, reason better, and ultimately understand more by learning to teach someone else—even a virtual “teachable agent”—than they will when learning for themselves.
Being social is a frame of mind, said Daniel Schwartz, the director of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based AAA Lab, a social and cognitive learning research center. “These kids know these characters aren’t alive, but they get engaged with the narrative and play pretend, and it brings out a lot of...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or purchase this article.
Subscribe to Education Week and Save
Get a full year and save up to 45%!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
- Elementary School Teacher
- Success Academy Charter Schools, New York, NY
- K-8 Principal
- EdVantages/Performance Academies, Detroit, MI
- 2 Positions -Associate Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer, and Director of Human of Resources
- Washington County Public Schools, Hagerstown, MD
- Principals
- Prince George's County Public Schools, MD
- Principal
- Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, Los Angeles, CA
