Affiliations: Psychology Department, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. siler@andrew.cmu.edu | Department of Computer Science, University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. vanlehn@cs.pitt.edu
Abstract: Face-to-face (FTF) human-human tutoring has ranked among the most
effective forms of instruction. However, because computer-mediated (CM)
tutoring is becoming increasingly common, it is instructive to evaluate its
effectiveness relative to face-to-face tutoring. Does the lack of spoken,
face-to-face interaction affect learning gains and motivation? In this study,
pairs of undergraduate students and tutors worked on physics problems either
face-to-face or via a typed chat window. Although face-to-face tutoring took
less time, students learned equal amounts in the two conditions. In both
conditions, short tutor turns were associated with increased student learning.
In both conditions, students who were more active had higher learning gains.
Students in the CM condition who gained more produced more words per
conversational turn. The same relationship was found in the FTF context only
after back-channel feedback was taken out. A more direct measure of student
activity, the relative proportion of student-initiated actions in
problem-solving, was more strongly associated with student learning in the FTF
context, but only for students with higher verbal SAT scores. Of the
motivational variables we investigated, only students' ability
goals (i.e. wanting to demonstrate one's ability to others) were
influenced somewhat differently by the two contexts. These results suggest that
although the difference in communication medium changes superficial
characteristics of the tutoring such as its duration, most of the important
pedagogical characteristics – learning gains, tutorial interaction, the
activity measures associated with learning gains, and student motivation –
were not affected.
