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Teachable Agent: Learning by Teaching Math

by Donggil Song, 2011.

Teachable Agent is an application based on the instructional technology that draws on the social metaphor of teaching a computer agent to help students learn. We wanted to apply the concept of Teachable Agent to the math education field.

1. Start Eins (no longer available)

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2. Sign-in

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3. Teaching Phase

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4. Draggable Materials
You can drag & drop these icons to explain the meaning of the arithmetic mean. When these icons are moved to some of vacant rectangles, the program notices what this is.

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5. Interaction
Currently, it’s simple, only echoing. Later, it will be upgraded to process a natural language.

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6. The number of digits – Drag
The number of digits will be expressed on the board automatically. Users can also drag and drop this number.

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7. The number of digits – Infinity and “m”

If “⋯” icon was clicked, the number of digits would become ∞. If “⋯” and “n” were used, the number of digits would become “m”. If you click the “Let’s call it a day” button, the test page will be shown.

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8. Test Phase

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9. Questions
After clicking the question buttons (1 to 4) sequentially, you will be able to see your agent’s test results.

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10. Result – Grade D

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11. Result – Grade C
If a tutor (user) explained (3+6+8)/3 as a meaning of the mean, Eins would solve the problems which deal with two or three digits only.

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12. Result – Grade A pattern

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13. Result – Another Grade A

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