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Three design principles for teachable agents: visible thinking, independent performance with recursive feedback, and student responsibility for the agent

Design · All designs
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 1 claim rests on one study

Description

The article organizes teachable agent (TA) design around three principles drawn from the learning sciences: the TA "makes its thought processes visible"; it "exhibits independent performance to produce recursive feedback," grounded in Premack's recursive thought and the prote´ge´ effect; and it engenders social responsibility toward the agent (naming, customization, game rewards). The authors stress the main value is that the principles "bring these positive learning mechanisms together into a single learning technology," instantiated in Betty's Brain.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

  • The teacher, curriculum specialist, or researcher must produce hidden expert maps so the system can generate questions and feedback

Constraints

  • The principles are not intended to exclude other approaches to TA design; they reflect features that asserted themselves over 15 years of work

Target Learners

  • elementary-school students (studied with 9-10-year-old fourth-graders)

Learning Goals

  • scientific reasoning schemas such as hierarchical class-inclusion reasoning
  • science content understanding

Claims

Examples

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Key Sources

  • Doris B. Chin, Ilsa M. Dohmen, and Daniel L. Schwartz. (2013). Young Children Can Learn Scientific Reasoning with Teachable Agents. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2013.24
Page metadata
Field Value
type design
id teachable-agent-three-design-principles
title Three design principles for teachable agents: visible thinking, independent performance with recursive feedback, and student responsibility for the agent
description The article organizes teachable agent (TA) design around three principles drawn from the learning sciences: the TA "makes its thought processes visible"; it "exhibits independent performance to produce recursive feedb...
status review
generated by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-16
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — doris-b-chin-2013

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