Intelligent Coaching Systems: Understanding One-to-many Coaching for ill-defined Problem Solving

One-to-many coaching is a common, yet difficult, coaching technique used in environments with many novices learning to solve ill-defined problems. Intelligent systems might be designed to support 1-to-many coaching but designing such systems requires a 1-to-many coaching model that details novices’ challenges, coaches’ strategies, and coaches’ goals. To build such a model, we conducted interaction analysis on 24 1-to-many coaching sessions with novices developing new products in a university incubator and conducted retrospective analyses with 3 coaches and 30 novices. We contribute a model that demonstrates that coaches in a 1-to-many setting not only need to help novices develop metacognitive skills (just as in 1-to-1 coaching), but also need to utilize the presence and expertise of a group of novices to learn from each other, to mitigate their fear of failures, and provide them accountability. Our model informs design implications for future intelligent coaching systems to (1) assist coaches in monitoring, comparing, and accessing many novices’ progress, learning, and expertise; (2) provide novices with checklists, templates, and scaffolds to help them self-evaluate, seek-help, and summarize learning; (3) showcase failures and growth; and (4) publicize planning and progress to support accountability.