An investigation of conversational agent interventions supporting historical reasoning in primary education

Abstract

This work examines the efficiency of an agent intervention mode, aiming to stimulate productive conversational interactions and encourage students to explicate their historical reasoning about important domain concepts. The findings of a pilot study, conducted in the context of primary school class in Modern History, (a) suggest a favorable student opinion of the conversational agent, (b) indicate that agent interventions can help students to engage in a transactive form of dialogue, where peers build on each other’s reasoning, and (c) reveal a series of interaction patterns emerging from the display of the agent interventions.