Questioning Mechanisms during Tutoring, Conversation, and Human-Computer Interaction
Abstract
One-to-one tutoring is more effective than alternative training methods, yet there have been few attempts to examine the process of naturalistic tutoring. This project explored dialogue patterns in two corpora: graduate students tutoring undergraduates in research methods, and high school students tutoring 7th graders in algebra. We analyzed pedagogical strategies, feedback mechanisms, question asking, question answering, and pragmatic assumptions during the tutoring process. One pervasive dialogue pattern was a five-step frame: (1) tutor asks question, (2) student answers question, (3) tutor gives short feedback on answer quality, (4) tutor and student collaboratively improve on answer quality, and (5) tutor assesses the student's understanding of the answer. Tutor questions were primarily motivated by curriculum scripts and the process of coaching students through exemplar problems -- rarely by attempts to diagnose and remediate the student's idiosyncratic knowledge deficits. Dialogue patterns were simulated by two computational models: a recurrent connectionist network and a recursive transition network. These models capture the systematicity in the sequential ordering of speech act categories. That is, to what extent does a model accurately predict the category of speech act N+1, given speech acts 1 through N?.... Question asking, Question answering, Tutoring, Learning.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA266199
Entities
People
- Arthur C. Graesser
Organizations
- University of Memphis Department of Psychology