Teaching About Dynamic Processes: A Teachable Agents Approach

Abstract. This paper discusses the extensions that we have made to Betty’s Brain teachable agent system to help students learn about dynamic processes in a river ecosystem. Students first learn about dynamic behavior in a simulation envi-ronment, and then teach Betty by introducing cycles into the concept map repre-sentation. Betty’s qualitative reasoning mechanisms have been extended so that she can reason about cycles and determine how entities change over time. Prelimi-nary experiments were conducted to study and analyze the usefulness of the simu-lation. Analysis of the students ’ protocols was very revealing, and the lessons learnt have led to redesigned simulation interfaces. A new study with the system Modern society is engulfed by technology artifacts that impact every aspect of daily life. This makes learning and problem solving with advanced math and science concepts impor-tant components of the K-12 curriculum. Many of the teaching and testing methods in pre-sent day school systems focus on memorization and not on true understanding of domai