A Study on Human-Computer Interaction Mechanism in an Intelligent Tutoring System

Abstract

Discussion is a common and important learning process. Involvement of a virtual agent can provide adaptive support for the discussion process. Argumentative knowledge construction is beneficial to learners’ acquisition of knowledge,but the effectiveness of argumentative scaffolding in existing studies is not consistent. Based on an intelligent discussion system, a total of 47 undergraduate students took part in the experiment and they were assigned to three different conditions: content-related plus content-independent scaffolding condition, content-related scaffolding condition, and the control condition. Under the content-related and content-independent scaffolding condition, the computer agent provided an idea from semantically different categories (content-related scaffolding) according to the automatic categorization of the current contributions, and further inquired the participants about their attitudes and reasons (content-independent scaffolding). Under the condition of content-related scaffolding condition, the virtual agent only provided semantically different viewpoints. Under the control condition, the subjects expressed their opinion independently without the participation of the virtual agent. Findings revealed that compared with the control group, when the virtual agent provided semantically different ideas (content-related scaffolding), the discussion breadth (number of categories) was improved and the subjects felt that they had a more comprehensive understanding of the problem. Compared with the content-related scaffolding condition, when the virtual agent provided semantically different ideas and further asked about the attitudes and reasons, the subjects expressed more agreement with these views, but mentioned fewer categories during the discussion. This study suggests that the content-related scaffolding can facilitate the cognitive processing effect relevant to the topic of discussion. When the content independent scaffolding is added, it can promote the argumentative processing, but may have a negative effect on the cognitive processing related to the topic discussed.

Keywords

artificial intelligence in education / intelligent tutoring system / group discussion / cognitive diversity / argumentative knowledge construction / scaffolding / content-related scaffolding / content-independent scaffolding

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