Some justifications for the learning by disturbing strategy

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are evolving towards a more co-operative relationship between the system and the student. More and more, learning is considered as a constructive process rather than a simple transferral of knowledge. This trend has brought to light new co-operative tutoring strategies. One of these tutoring strategies, the learning companion, designed to overcome some of the limitations of the classical tutoring model, involves a student and two simulated participants: tutor and another student. More recently a new strategy has been proposed, learning by disturbing. In this strategy, the simulated student is a troublemaker whose role is to deliberately disturb the human student. This article describes the learning by disturbing strategy by contrasting it with the learning companion strategy. In addition, some links are drawn between this new strategy and the psychology of learning, in particular with cognitive dissonance theory.