Steps towards a Challenging Teachable Agent

This chapter presents the first steps towards a new type of pedagogical agent – a Challenger Teachable Agent, CTA. The overall aim of introducing a CTA is to increase engagement and motivation and challenge students into deeper learning and metacognitive reasoning. The paper discusses desired design features of such an agent on the basis of related work and results from a study where 11-year old students interacted with a first version of a CTA in the framework of an educational software for history. The focus is on how students respond when the CTA disagrees and questions their suggestions, and how groups of students, differing in response behavior and in self-efficacy, experience the CTA