Affective Tutoring System based on Extended Control-value Emotional Agent and 3x5 RLO Matrix

Abstract

The present research aims to present the general framework of an affective teaching system (affective tutoring system - ATS) oriented to engineering education. ATS system is equipped with an emotional agent inspired by the psycho-pedagogical researches of control-value theory that try to estimate the student's emotion during a reusable learning object (RLO), having as a stimulus the ability evaluated by means of item response theory. To present a lesson the RLO model was improved, being organized in a matrix form with five columns and three rows. Each objective of teaching is assigned to a RLO array. The five columns cover a theoretical concept, its properties, relationships between concepts, the involvement of the human factor in these relationships and conclusions. The three lines cover the following aspects of teaching: theoretical teaching of the five concepts from the columns, teaching practical examples or typical experiment for each column, and on the last line specific exercises that must be solved for each column separately. The RLO matrix object with three rows and five columns has also, besides teaching objective, verification tests associated to each element in the array. Evaluation of matrix tests is performed by item response theory, which links estimated student emotion with the type of teaching objective by Extended-Value Emotional Control Agent.