Learning by teaching SimStudent

Abstract

The effect of tutor learning has been studied in various contexts, providing ample evidence to suggest that students learn when they teach others. Yet, the cognitive and social factors that facilitate or inhibit tutor learning are still not well understood. One factor that prohibited research progress in this area is that studying the tutor learning effect could often be done only at the cost of tutees' learning. To address this problem, we built an on-line learning environment where students learn by teaching a computer agent, called SimStudent, rather than their peers [1]. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.