Affective Communication between ECAs and Users in Collaborative Virtual Environments: The REVERIE European Parliament Use Case

Ioannis Doumanis,Daphne Economou

doi:10.3390/mti3010007

Abstract

This paper discusses the enactment and evaluation of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) capable of affective communication in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) for learning. The CVE discussed is a reconstruction of the European Parliament in Brussels developed using the REVERIE (Real and Virtual Engagement In Realistic Immersive Environment) framework. REVERIE is a framework designed to support the creation of CVEs populated by ECAs capable of natural human-like behaviour, physical interaction and engagement. The ECA provides a tour of the virtual parliament and participates in the learning activity as an intervention mechanism to engage students. The ECA is capable of immediacy behaviour (verbal and non-verbal) and interactions to support a dialogic learning scenario. The design of the ECA is grounded on a theoretical framework that addresses the required characteristics of the ECA to successfully support collaborative learning. In this paper, we discuss the Heuristic Evaluation of the REVERIE ECA which revealed a wealth of usability problems that led to the development of a list of design recommendations to improve their usability, including its immediacy behaviours and interactions. An ECA capable of effectively creating rapport should result in more positive experiences for participants and better learning results for students in dialogic learning scenarios. Future work aims to evaluate this hypothesis in real-world scenarios with teachers and students participating in a shared virtual educational experience.

Highlights

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are autonomous software systems present in an interface with some form of embodiment
Verbal and Non-verbal immediacy behaviours In this cluster, we looked for usability problems related to the ECA’s verbal and non-verbal immediacy behaviours
The study evaluated the usability of an ECA in a Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) using heuristic evaluation

Summary

Introduction

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are autonomous software systems present in an interface with some form of embodiment Their purpose is to mimic interpersonal communication when interacting with users, including the ability to produce and respond to verbal and nonverbal communication. REVERIE (Real and Virtual Engagement In Realistic Immersive Environment) [5,6] is a framework which supports the creation of ECAs capable of recognising the user affect state and respond with appropriate verbal and nonverbal behaviours designed to facilitate social interaction among human users. We designed a collaborative learning scenario using the REVERIE framework In this scenario, the ECA has the task of guiding groups of users (one teacher and six students) in a virtual representation of the European Parliament in Brussels [6]. The ECA is a female character capable of recognising the user’s speech (yes/no keywords) and affect and to react using verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviours

Methods

Results

Conclusion