Cooperative Learning Strategies for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are evolving towards a more co-operative relationship between the system and the student. More and more, learning is considered as a constructive process rather than a simple transfer of knowledge. This trend has brought to light new cooperative tutoring strategies. One of these tutoring strategies, the learning companion, is designed to overcome some of the limitations of the classical tutoring model; it involves a student and two simulated participants, a tutor and another student. More recently we proposed the learning by disturbing strategy, in which the simulated student is a troublemaker with the role to deliberately disturb the human student. In this article, we describe the learning by disturbing strategy and compare it with that of the learning companion. In addition, we draw links to the psychology of learning and in particular to the cognitive dissonance theory. We develop an indicator that measures discord between the ideas, helping us to pinpoint the concepts that learners most likely misunderstand. This allows us to plan more efficiently the interventions of the troublemaker. Co-operative learning strategies 3