Understanding learning strategy as conversation

Battle, Steve

Abstract

The goal of this research is to understand the learning strategies employed by students using so called Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), with the aim of supporting efforts to improve the effectiveness of this type of educational technology. An experiment is conducted in which we observe and record online interactions between the participant and the ITS, with the goal of discovering learning strategies used by students. Gordon Pask's Conversation Theory defines a social constructivist account of learning and teaching, and the hypothesis explored here is whether analysis of the observed data encoded using CT will help to identify behaviours that represent meaningful learning strategies. These strategies are identified with Markov Processes, enabling the use of Hidden Markov Models to discover clusters of distinct patterns of behaviour within the observational data.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Start Date: Apr 18, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• APA6 Citation: Battle, S. (2017, April). Understanding learning strategy as conversation. Paper presented at AISB 2017
• Keywords: cybernetics, conversation theory
• Related Public URLs: http://aisb2017.cs.bath.ac.uk/conference-edition-proceedings.pdf
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) Convention 2017