Debating the Issue of Tutoring

Interactivity: Intuition vs. Experimentation

Tanner JacksonIt’s a MAD MAD MAD MAD Morning

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Effective Tutoring

• Chi, M. T. H., Siler, S., Jeong, H., Yamauchi, T., & Hausmann, R. G. (2001). Learning from human tutoring. Cognitive Science, 25, 471-533.

– Three possible explanations:

• Tutor’s pedagogical skills

• Student active construction

• Joint effort of the Tutor and Student

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Effective Tutoring

• Chi’s components of effective tutoring:– If effectiveness is due to tutor’s pedagogical skills

• Dialog dominated by tutor• Frequent/common use of strategies

– Student active construction• Dialog dominated by student• Frequent/common use of self-explanation (construction)

– Joint effort of the two• Distribution of turn-taking in the dialog• Frequent/common use of elicited construction and

scaffolding

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Interactivity

• Interactivity could include any joint effort (Clark, 1996; Chi et

al, 2001):– Everyday conversation– Mixed initiative dialogue– More than one person taking action– Getting feedback from an outside source– Acknowledging feedback (head nods, gestures, eye gaze)

• Anything that involves some sort of internal AND external participation/communication.– This includes: people, computers programs, cars, ATMs, etc.– This excludes: monologues, lectures, reading, watching

(without doing or acknowledging), etc.

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Interactivity Hypothesis

1. Communicative claim: Both tutors and students are maximally interactive.• Tutors’ turns are largely communicative, which

elicit content from the students• Students’ turns are responsive to the tutor

2. Learning claim: Interactive construction by the students (elicited by the tutor) should enable more learning than non-interactive construction (self-initiated).• If this second claim is true, then this would help to

pinpoint the advantage of tutoring above and beyond other learning methods

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Tutoring Interactivity

• For our own purposes, “Tutoring Interactivity” includes:– Dialogue (of any sort)– Turn taking (not necessarily mixed initiative)– At least 2 entities (tutor and tutee)

• Theoretical claim for Tutoring Interactivity– More interactivity => More learning– Students learn better/more/deeper if they learn

through interactive means.

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Tutoring Interactivity - Pseudo-theory #1

Interactivity allows for adaptive responses

Adaptive responses tailor the tutoring to each student’s appropriate level

Tutoring to each student’s appropriate level should be the most effective method of tutoring

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Tutoring Interactivity - Pseudo-theory #2

Interactivity allows for joint knowledge construction

Joint knowledge construction allows for all parties to contribute their pieces of knowledge

If everyone contributes their piece of knowledge, then the group can understand

something that the individuals did not initially know.

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Tutoring Interactivity - Pseudo-theory #3

Interactivity allows for prompting

Prompting allows for construction

If students construct knowledge on their own they will understand it more deeply and retain it

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Tutoring Interactivity – Pseudo-theory #4

Interactivity is good

Interactivity alone accounts for some benefits of tutoring

Benefits of tutoring are good

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Tutoring Interactivity

Intermission for:CommentsQuestionsConcerns

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Experimental Support

• Hypothesis: More interaction causes more learning

• Many experiments support– Tutoring > textbook (Graesser; Lane; Why2 expt. 2)

– Tutoring > nothing (Graesser; Merrill)

– Contingent tutoring > lecturing (Wood; Swanson)

– Canned text remediation > nothing (Katz)

– Tutoring > Canned text remediation (Why2 experiments 4 & 5Lo)

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Experimental Conflicts

• Also many experiments do not support:– Socratic tutoring = didactic tutoring (Rosé 2001)

– Scaffolding = lecturing or text (Chi; Rosé 2003)

– Tutoring = multiple choice & feedback (Aleven; Reif)

– Tutoring = Canned Text Remediation (Katz; Why2 experiments 1, 3 & 5)

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Experimental Conflicts

• VanLehn, Graesser, Jackson, Olney (submitted) Why2: Submitted to Cognitive Science Journal & Conference 2005.

– Three possible exceptions (when tutoring interactivity is not better than non-interactive learning methods):

• Sufficient prior knowledge

• Text/Monologue content = tutoring content

• Motivated to self-explain text/monologue content

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More on Interactivity

• Some vs. No interaction between steps– Wood, Wood & Middleton (1978)

• Assembling a complex block structure• Face-to-face contingent tutoring > demonstrating

– Swanson (1992)• Understanding how lens affect images• Face-to-face contingent tutoring > lecturing

– Merrill, Reiser, Merrill & Landes (1995)• Lisp programming• Tutoring > just flagging incorrect Lisp code

– Coleman (1998)• Photosynthesis• Conversational prompts > no prompts

– Lane & VanLehn (in press)• Pseudo-code design• Tutoring > reading

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More on Interactivity

• High vs. Low interaction between steps– Rosé, Moore, VanLehn & Albritton (2001)

• Electricity problem solving• Socratic tutoring = didactic tutoring

– Aleven, Koedinger & Popescu (???)• Geometry problem solving with justifications• Dialogue elicitation of justification = menu selections

– Reif & Scott (???)• Face-to-face human physics tutors = a CAI tutor

– Chi et al. (2001)• Deep, incremental reading of a text on blood circulation• Scaffolding = lecturing after each sentence

– Rosé, Bhembe, Siler & Srivastav (2003)• Qualitative physics• Tutoring = reading

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Tutoring Interactivity

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