Boosting learning-by-teaching in virtual tutoring

• A Virtual Tutee System (VTS) promoted a substantial degree of perusing when completing the reading assignments.
• The VTS prompted students to engage in deep reading and learning such as reflection, analysis, and elaboration.
• Students reported greater enjoyment and less boredom and anger with the reading tasks after using the VTS.
• Use of the VTS exemplifies the potential practice of changing required, undesirable tasks to autonomous, pleasant ones.

Research has shown that students tend to engage in quality learning when they are asked to teach (i.e., learning-by-teaching). In this study, a web-based tutoring environment has been developed to enhance the learning of college students by their teaching others: the Virtual Tutee System (VTS). In the VTS, students take the role of tutor and teach a virtual character about what they learn from readings. The design of the VTS has been refined through several iterations of formative evaluation. The current study explored whether the recent improvements made in the VTS augmented the learning-by-teaching effects. The VTS was evaluated with regard to its' effects on students' reading engagement and reading performance. Results indicated that students were behaviorally and cognitively engaged in reading with use of the VTS. Also, the study found a significant improvement in students' emotional engagement in reading after using the VTS. Limited support was found for enhancement of reading performance with repeated use of the VTS. Implications of the study findings are discussed, and suggestions for future research are provided.