VanLehn, K., Graesser, A. C., Jackson, G. T., Jordan, P., Olney, A., & Rose, C. P. (2007). When are tutorial dialogues more effective than reading? Cognitive Science 31(1), 3-52.

 

 

It is often assumed that engaging in a one-on-one dialogue with a tutor is more effective than listening to a lecture or reading a text.  Although earlier experiments have not always supported this hypothesis, this may be due in part to allowing the tutors to cover different content than the non-interactive instruction.  In 7 experiments, we tested the interaction hypothesis under the constraint that (1) all students covered the same content during instruction, (2) the task domain was qualitative physics, (3) the instruction was in natural language, as opposed to mathematical or other formal languages, and (4) the instruction conformed with a widely observed pattern in human tutoring, Graesser, Person and Magliano’s five-step frame.  The experiments compared 2 kinds of human tutoring (spoken and computer-mediated) with 2 kinds of natural-language-based computer tutoring (Why2-Atlas and Why2-AutoTutor) and 3 control conditions that involved studying texts.  The results depended on whether the students’ preparation matched the content of the instruction.  When novices (students who had not taken college physics) studied content that was written for intermediates (students who had taken college physics), then tutorial dialogue was reliably more beneficial than less interactive instruction, with large effect sizes.  When novices studied material written for novices, or intermediates studied material written for intermediates, then tutorial dialogue was not reliably more effective than the text-based control conditions. 

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