Understanding Students' Use of Code-Switching in a Learning by Teaching Technology

Personalized learning systems have shown significant learning gains when used in formal classroom teaching. Systems that use pedagogical agents for teaching have become popular, but typically their design does not account for multilingual classrooms. We investigated one such system in classrooms in the Philippines to see if and how students used code-switching when providing explanations of algebra problem solving. We found significant amounts of code-switching and explored cognitive and social factors such as explanation quality and affective valence that serve as evidence for code-switching motivations and effects. These results uncover complex social and cognitive interactions that occur during learning interactions with a virtual peer, and call for more affordances to support multilingual students.