PeerGPT: Probing the Roles of LLM-based Peer Agents as Team Moderators and Participants in Children's Collaborative Learning

Abstract: In children's collaborative learning, effective peer conversations can significantly enhance the quality of children's collaborative interactions. The integration of LLM agents into this setting explores their novel role as peers, assessing impacts as team moderators and participants. We invited two groups of participants to engage in a collaborative learning workshop, where they discussed and proposed conceptual solutions to a design problem. The peer conversation transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. We discovered that peer agents, while managing discussions effectively as team moderators, sometimes have their instructions disregarded. As participants, they foster children's creative thinking but may not consistently provide timely feedback. These findings highlight potential design improvements and considerations for peer agents in both roles.