Human Elements in Pedagogical Assistants that Aid in English Language Teaching & Learning: An Offline Study

Abstract

Technological development continuously advances with additional innovations added to the existing account. Yesterday’s apps, today’s ChatGPT, and tomorrow’s extended reality applications are proof of continuous innovation in the Information Technology (IT) sector. During the 2020 pandemic, the world’s education system shifted to online teaching. By then, Artificial Intelligence (AI) had already invested in introducing pedagogical agents (PAs) in teaching through multimedia learning. There are multiple attributable studies about human-comparable on-screen agents that support teaching and improve learning performance with their human characteristics like bodily moments, spoken narration, emotional expression, and gestures. Besides, AI provided pedagogical agents with an exuberant quality of surveilling students during classes. Foreign or second language teachers typically observe emotionality in the classrooms to motivate, encourage, and provide feedback. Thus, the current study aims to investigate and compare the characteristic features of pedagogical agents with those of on-screen teachers. It will explore to what extent the features stimulate the learning process in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) / English as a second language (ESL) learning. Additionally, the present study attempts to cover the classification of emotionality and agents’ contextual appearance in teaching English classes. The study will compare the pedagogical agents’ characteristics with human screen teachers’ characteristics using one-tailed, right-tailed F-test variance. The study proves that pedagogical agents are considered equal partners with on-screen teachers based on the available characteristics. Additionally, the study signals the need for future teachers to acquire technical skills.