Affective Pedagogical Agent in E-Learning Environment: A Reflective Analysis

Atasi Mohanty

doi:10.4236/ce.2016.74061

Abstract

In educational research the relationship between affect/emotion and performance on cognitive tasks is well documented in both the neuroscience and psychology literatures. Researchers have claimed that emotions play a vital role in perception, learning, decision making, rational thinking and other cognitive functions. At the same time some others have added that both the positive and negative affective states are equally important in the learning process. In the real-life physical learning environment students’ affective feedback is a major cue that human tutors use to constantly adapt their teaching strategies, so that learning would be most effective and efficient for each individual learner. Thus, in e-learning environment it’s a research issue to think about how to design an artificial affective tutor or pedagogical agent, who can respond to students’ emotion and accordingly guide and motivate them for better learning. However, for post-secondary learners it may be relevant, but for secondary level Indian students can it be feasible and cost-effective ICT learning tools. This raises many more questions about content, pedagogy, software designing and implementation of affective pedagogical agents as ICT learning tools in Indian school education system.

Highlights

In educational research the relationships between affect/volition and performance on cognitive tasks is well documented in both the neuroscience and psychology literatures
For example positive affect facilitates cognitive tasks like creative problem solving and cognitive organization and enhances the intrinsic motivation for accomplishing tasks (Isen, 2000; Isen, & Reeve, 2005), which confirms that positive affect/emotion can boost the performance in cognitive tasks
By understanding the students’ emotional states the virtual human/pedagogical agent can interact with humor and empathy with learners and the humorous performance can motivate them to learn, interested in learning, handle their emotions better and enhance the performance

Summary

Introduction

In educational research the relationships between affect/volition and performance on cognitive tasks is well documented in both the neuroscience and psychology literatures. Some other researchers have added that both positive and negative affective states and important in the learning process (Kort, Riley, & Picard, 2001). Students typically orbit the quadrants in an anti-clockwise direction as they attempt to solve a problem Both the positive and negative emotions are a natural part of students’ normal learning cycles. Tutors can help the students’ learning process through an awareness of their affective states. If a students’ learning process intrinsically involves a journey through distinct emotional states, identifying these emotional states would help an intelligent tutor to speed up this learning process on its positive way (Kort et al, 2001). An affect-sensitive tutoring system is very important to deal with the students’ affective state in learning environment and especially in e-learning context

Affective Tutor

Pedagogical Agents

Affective Computing

Research on Pedagogical Agents

Findings

Conclusions and Implications