Much HCI research on prompting prosocial behaviors focuses on methods for increasing empathy. However, increased empathy may have unintended negative consequences. Our work offers an alternative solution that encourages critical reflection for nurturing compassion, which involves motivation and action to help others. In a between-subject experiment, participants (N=60) viewed a climate change documentary while receiving no prompts (CON), reflective prompts to focus on their emotions (RE) or surprises (RS). State compassion, critical reflection, and motivation to act or learn were measured at the end of the session (post-video) and two weeks later (follow-up). Despite participants’ condition not affecting compassion, critical reflection was positively correlated with post-video state compassion. RE and RS participants demonstrated deeper reflection and reported higher motivation to learn post-video, and more prosocial behavioral changes during follow-up. RS participants reported better follow-up recall than RE participants. We conclude by discussing implications on designing technology to support compassion and longer-term critical reflection.

Benefits of learning by teaching (LbT) have been highlighted by previous studies from a pedagogical lens, as well as through computer-supported systems. However, the challenges that university students face in technology-mediated LbT---whether it be teaching oneself, teaching a peer, or teaching an agent---are not well understood. Furthermore, there is a gap in knowledge on the challenges that students encounter throughout the process of teaching (content selection, preparation, teaching, receiving and giving feedback, and reflection) despite its importance to the design of LbT platforms. Thus, we conducted a study with 24 university students where they taught content they had not fully grasped, without guidance, and participated in a semi-structured interview. Results demonstrate that participants encountered the following challenges: psychological barriers relating to self and others, and lack of know-how. Furthermore, we illuminate design implications required to overcome these challenges and benefit from LbT without requiring prior training in pedagogy.

Previous studies have highlighted the benefits of pedagogical conversational agents using socially-oriented conversation with students. In this work, we examine the effects of a conversational agent’s use of affiliative and self-defeating humour — considered conducive to social well-being and enhancing interpersonal relationships — on learners’ perception of the agent and attitudes towards the task. Using a between-subjects protocol, 58 participants taught a conversational agent about rock classification using a learning-by-teaching platform, the Curiosity Notebook. While all agents were curious and enthusiastic, the style of humour was manipulated such that the agent either expressed an affiliative style, a self-defeating style, or no humour. Results demonstrate that affiliative humour can significantly increase motivation and effort, while self-defeating humour, although enhancing effort, negatively impacts enjoyment. Findings further highlight the importance of understanding learner characteristics when using humour.

In this work, we designed a teachable robot that encourages a pair of students to discuss their thoughts and teaching decisions during the tutoring session. The robot adapts to the students’ talking activity and adjusts the frequency and type of encouragement. We hypothesize that the robot’s encouragement of group discussion can enhance the social engagement of group members, leading to improved learning and enjoyment. We ran a user study (n = 68), where a pair of participants (dyad) worked together to teach a humanoid robot about rocks and minerals. In the adaptive condition, the robot uses reinforcement learning to maximise interaction between the dyad members. Results show that the adaptive robot was successful in creating more dialogue between dyad members and in increasing task engagement, but did not affect learning or enjoyment. Over time, the adaptive robot was also able to encourage both members to contribute more equally to the conversation.

Recent work investigated the potential of comics to support the teaching and learning of programming concepts and suggested several ways coding strips, a form of comic strip with its corresponding code, can be used. Building on this work, we tested the recommended use cases of coding strip in an undergraduate introductory computer science course at a large comprehensive university. At the end of the course, we surveyed students to assess their experience and found they benefited in various ways. Our work contributes a demonstration of the various ways comics can be used in introductory CS courses and an initial understanding of benefits and challenges with using comics in computing education gleaned from an analysis of students' survey responses and code submissions.

While learning by teaching is a popular pedagogical technique, it is a learning phenomenon that is difficult to study due to variability in the tutor-tutee pairings and learning environments. In this paper, we introduce the Curiosity Notebook, a web-based research infrastructure for studying learning by teaching via the use of a teachable agent. We describe and provide rationale for the set of features that are essential for such a research infrastructure, outline how these features have evolved over two design iterations of the Curiosity Notebook and through two studies---a 4-week field study with 12 elementary school students interacting with a NAO robot and an hour-long online observational study with 41 university students interacting with an agent---demonstrate the utility of our platform for making observations of learning-by-teaching phenomena in diverse learning environments. Based on these findings, we conclude the paper by reflecting on our design evolution and envisioning future iterations of the Curiosity Notebook.