Abstract. This paper discusses the extensions that we have made to Betty’s Brain teachable agent system to help students learn about dynamic processes in a river ecosystem. Students first learn about dynamic behavior in a simulation environment, and then teach Betty by introducing cycles into the concept map representation. Betty’s qualitative reasoning mechanisms have been extended so that she can reason about cycles and determine how entities change over time. Preliminary experiments were conducted to study and analyze the usefulness of the simulation. Analysis of the students ’ protocols was very revealing, and the lessons learnt have led to redesigned simulation interfaces. A new study with the system will be conducted in a fifth grade science classroom in May, 2005.

Abstract: This paper reports on results of experiments carried out with TRIANGLE. The software has been designed and developed since 2001 in several modifications as an experimental prototype for an interactive multimedia learning object. During the design, it was essential to provide a user interface with good usability in order to support the teachers with only a minimum knowledge of computers. It was also necessary to provide a simple data structure and open architecture including runtime evaluation. The basic idea was to provide a quiz show game in order to uphold as strong a level of motivation as possible. The purpose of this prototype was to test the efficiency of three main psychological concepts in terms of learning: motivation, incidental learning, and something we call the Tamagotchi effect, which refers to the concept of personal responsibility. A pre-test/post-test control group design was chosen. The experiments were carried out in real-life classroom settings including N=44 K8 students. Mathematics was chosen as the subject. Three hypotheses were tested: 1) This game based learning software provides a level of motivation high enough to make learning fun, even with less popular subjects; 2) Chunks of knowledge mixed into informational text, within a hypertext structure, are efficient enough to facilitate student learning; 3) An additional virtual