Paper ID

2800

Paper Type

full

Description

Problem-solving skills are considered one of the most important learning goals for life. Therefore, educational institutions should help learners gain these skills despite organizational and financial restrictions. Even though there exists a growing body of research about the design and use of Smart Personal Assistants, such as Google’s Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa, little is known about their ability to help learners improve their problem-solving skills. Using a mixed-method approach, we investigate the value of newly emerging Smart Personal Assistants to improve long-term problem solving skills with the help of a pre- and post-test quasi field experiment in a second grade class of a vocational business school in Switzerland. The results indicate that groups interacting with Smart Personal Assistants show significantly better problem-solving skills compared to learners using paper-based support explained by changing learning processes. Our study contributes to existing intelligent tutoring system and technology-enhanced scaffolding research.

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Improving Problem-Solving Skills with Smart Personal Assistants: Insights from a Quasi Field Experiment

Problem-solving skills are considered one of the most important learning goals for life. Therefore, educational institutions should help learners gain these skills despite organizational and financial restrictions. Even though there exists a growing body of research about the design and use of Smart Personal Assistants, such as Google’s Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa, little is known about their ability to help learners improve their problem-solving skills. Using a mixed-method approach, we investigate the value of newly emerging Smart Personal Assistants to improve long-term problem solving skills with the help of a pre- and post-test quasi field experiment in a second grade class of a vocational business school in Switzerland. The results indicate that groups interacting with Smart Personal Assistants show significantly better problem-solving skills compared to learners using paper-based support explained by changing learning processes. Our study contributes to existing intelligent tutoring system and technology-enhanced scaffolding research.