Fundng for aspects of this fascinating project about Teachable Agents continues until 2006 from NIH. Although it’s written for academics, ISVs and developrs may find useful ideas about animating thought for Tablet PC education software.
According to the grant page (see the bottom of the Teachable Agents page), It is a common intuition that one of the best ways to learn something is to attempt to teach it to others. The research project is testing this intuition and its usefulness for educational practice. Central to the work are web-based “teachable agents” that students teach as a way to learn themselves and that permit studies of the active ingredients of learning by teaching. The project will use the agents to help students learn science and mathematics content and help teachers learn content-specific pedagogy. The intellectual merit of the work is that the agents provide a method for developing and testing a learning theory that helps explain the motivational and cognitive benefits of learning by teaching. By manipulating a teachable agent’s available features and use (something that is hard to do with actual pupils), it is possible to experimentally isolate different components of the learning by teaching interaction.
Ah, there’s that word pedagogy again. Just accept it’s common meaning to teach for now.
Plan to spend time reading over this article. It’s technical and detailed.
It appears to me that Loren‘s use of Direct Learning (I described Direct Learning in previous blogs) concepts simplifies a practical use of this project. I’m pretty sure he does not know about this project, so evolved his software separately. I wonder if any of you have had contact with this project?
I’ll be watching it with interest.
Posted: April 5, 2005