The LECOBA learning companion system: expertise, motivation and teaching
Jorge Adolfo Ramírez Uresti · International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning · 2001
A Learning Companion System (LCS) is a variation of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) where besides the tutor and the student a third agent is added a Learning Companion (LC). The exact nature of the role of the learning companion is one of the most important issues of these systems. This paper describes an LCS for Boolean Algebra (LECOBA) implemented to explore the role of the companion as a student of the human student (Learning by Teaching). To implement such a system, issues such as the motivation of the student to interact with the companion and the LC's knowledge of the domain had to be dealt with. LECOBA provides companions with two types of expertise weak and strong, and two types of motivation Motivated and Free. The evaluation of the system suggested that subjects who faced the weak learning companion in the motivated condition showed a trend of greatest learning gain, though the differences were not significant.