TY - GEN
T1 - Reducing mind-wandering during vicarious learning from an intelligent tutoring system
AU - Mills, Caitlin
AU - Bosch, Nigel
AU - Krasich, Kristina
AU - D’Mello, Sidney K.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) DRL 1235958 and IIS 1523091. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.
Publisher Copyright:
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Mind-wandering is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is negatively related to learning. The purpose of the current study is to examine mind-wandering during vicarious learning, where participants observed another student engage in a learning session with an intelligent tutoring system (ITS). Participants (N = 118) watched a prerecorded learning session with GuruTutor, a dialogue-based ITS for biology. The response accuracy of the student interacting with the tutor (i.e., the firsthand student) was manipulated across three conditions: Correct (100% accurate responses), Incorrect (0% accurate), and Mixed (50% accurate). Results indicated that Firsthand Student Expertise influenced the frequency of mind-wandering in the participants who engaged vicariously (secondhand students), such that viewing a moderately-skilled firsthand learner (Mixed correctness) reduced the rate of mind-wandering (M = 25.4%) compared to the Correct (M = 33.9%) and Incorrect conditions (M = 35.6%). Firsthand Student Expertise did not impact learning, and we also found no evidence of an indirect effect of Firsthand Student Expertise on learning through mind-wandering (Firsthand Student Expertise → Mind-wandering → Learning). Our findings provide evidence that mind-wandering is a frequent experience during online vicarious learning and offer initial suggestions for the design of vicarious learning experiences that aim to maintain learners’ attentional focus.
AB - Mind-wandering is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is negatively related to learning. The purpose of the current study is to examine mind-wandering during vicarious learning, where participants observed another student engage in a learning session with an intelligent tutoring system (ITS). Participants (N = 118) watched a prerecorded learning session with GuruTutor, a dialogue-based ITS for biology. The response accuracy of the student interacting with the tutor (i.e., the firsthand student) was manipulated across three conditions: Correct (100% accurate responses), Incorrect (0% accurate), and Mixed (50% accurate). Results indicated that Firsthand Student Expertise influenced the frequency of mind-wandering in the participants who engaged vicariously (secondhand students), such that viewing a moderately-skilled firsthand learner (Mixed correctness) reduced the rate of mind-wandering (M = 25.4%) compared to the Correct (M = 33.9%) and Incorrect conditions (M = 35.6%). Firsthand Student Expertise did not impact learning, and we also found no evidence of an indirect effect of Firsthand Student Expertise on learning through mind-wandering (Firsthand Student Expertise → Mind-wandering → Learning). Our findings provide evidence that mind-wandering is a frequent experience during online vicarious learning and offer initial suggestions for the design of vicarious learning experiences that aim to maintain learners’ attentional focus.
KW - Attention
KW - Intelligent tutoring systems
KW - Mind-wandering
KW - Task-unrelated thought
KW - Vicarious learning
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-23204-7_25
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-23204-7_25
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85068326872
SN - 9783030232030
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 296
EP - 307
BT - Artificial Intelligence in Education - 20th International Conference, AIED 2019, Proceedings
A2 - Isotani, Seiji
A2 - Millán, Eva
A2 - Ogan, Amy
A2 - McLaren, Bruce
A2 - Hastings, Peter
A2 - Luckin, Rose
PB - Springer
T2 - 20th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2019
Y2 - 25 June 2019 through 29 June 2019
ER -