Pedagogical Agents Research Articles

Multimodal Metaphors for Edutainment in E-Learning Interfaces: A Usability Evaluation of Learnability and Experienced User Performance

This paper aimed to comparatively analyze two methods of Electronic Learning (E-learning), in which avatars were utilized as virtual lecturers, with a particular focus on measuring learnability and Experienced User Performance (EUP). Insight has been provided into E-learning motivations and guidelines within the area of edutainment. Research into the communication of educational materials has also been included to provide explanations into the different edutainment techniques and factors influencing E-leaning performance. An E-learning environment was designed and constructed based on pedagogical principles. Emphasis was placed on the significance of multimodal interaction metaphors, as a means of improving learning skills. An empirical study was conducted to compare two E-learning approaches: avatars as pedagogical agents and E-learning through edutainment. The study was divided into two experiments: learnability and EUP; of which, two groups were instructed to interact with the experimental platforms under two conditions: first-time-use and frequent-use. The results of the experiments showed a statistical significance in favor of EUP in E-learning through edutainment.

Imitation of a Pedagogical Agent’s Gestures Enhances Memory for Words in Second Language

Pedagogical agents (PAs) are virtual characters in computer-based learning environments. PAs can train humans in various domains. Here, a PA cues subjects to learn vocabulary items through enactment, i.e., to perform an illustrative gesture while learning a word. It is well known that enactment impacts memory. Also, imitation is a natural mechanism driving learning. Combining both enactment and imitation could improve memory even more. In a within-subjects study, 44 school children learned 45 vocabulary items according to three conditions: an audio-visual baseline, an observation condition (participants watched the PA during enactment) and an imitation condition (participants imitated the PA’s gestures). We documented learning progress by cued recall tests. Over four days, we found that, compared to the baseline and to mere observation, imitation of enactment significantly enhanced memory for words in the foreign language.

A Pedagogical Agent as an Interface of an Intelligent Tutoring System to Assist Collaborative Learning

This article discusses the aspects that are recommendable when designing an interface that includes a collaborative pedagogical agent within a context in which the collaborative learning process is reinforced by the task distribution process that goes with it. The concept of the intelligent tutoring system, conceived as a pedagogical interface agent (interface with human features that permits interaction between system and user), forms the basis of this study. The pedagogical agent is constituted by an intelligent tutoring system that makes a diagnosis adapted to needs of students, so as to improve the learning process. This is achieved by dynamic interaction on a system that has a collaborative and distributed interaction facility, in which the agent is conceived as an educational tool.

An Affective-Motivational Interface for a Pedagogical Agent

This research is framed within the affective computing, which explains the importance of emotions in human cognition (decision making, perception, interaction and human intelligence). Applying this approach to a pedagogical agent is an essential part to enhance the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process of an intelligent learning system. This work focuses on the design of the inference engine that will give life to the interface, where the latter is represented by a pedagogical agent. The inference engine is based on an affective-motivational model. This model is implemented by using artificial intelligence technique called fuzzy cognitive maps.

Users' preference for and perception of animated pedagogical agents

This study investigates the effect that ethnicity and gender have on participants' preference for and perception of animated pedagogical agents APAs. Ratings of four agents, an African-American male and female and a Caucasian male and female were collected from 120 workers on Mechanical Turk. Results indicated that users did not prefer or more highly rate agents who were identical to themselves, contrary to the similarity hypothesis. Instead, the results indicated and interaction between the ethnicity and gender of the agent and the ethnicity and gender of the participants. This interaction followed research on teacher evaluations. This suggests that beliefs held by participants about ethnicity and gender may offer more insight into students' perceptions about APAs than their own characteristics.

Teaching Introductory Programming

From the educational point of view, learning by mistake could be influential teaching method, especially for teaching/learning Computer Science (CS), and/or Information Technologies (IT). As learning programming is very difficult and hard task, perhaps even more difficult and extremely demanding job to teach novices how to make correct computers programs. The concept of design pedagogical patterns has received surprisingly little attention so far from the researchers in the field of pedagogy/didactics of Computer Science. Design pedagogical patterns are descriptions of successful solutions of common problems that occur in teaching/learning CS and IT. Good pedagogical patterns could help teachers when they have to design new course, lessons, topics, examples, and assignments, in a particular context. Pedagogical patterns captured the best practice in a teaching/learning CS and/or IT. They could be very helpful to the teachers in preparing their own lessons. In this paper a brief description of special class design of pedagogical patterns, the group of patterns for learning by mistakes, is presented. In addition, usage of helpful and misleading pedagogical agents, which have been developed in Agent-based E-learning System (AE-lS), based on pedagogical pattern for explanation Explain, and pedagogical pattern for learning by mistakes Wolf, Wolf, Mistake, is described.

Special Issue on Intelligent Support for Learning in Groups

Advances in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) over the past two decades have enabled the development and deployment of highly effective learning technologies that support learners across a wide-range of domains and age-groups. On the other hand, research in collaborative learning has informed instructional approaches that leverage the pedagogical benefits of learning in groups (including dyads, small groups and teams). The use of these approaches in digital environments is being actively studied in the field of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). In addition to the increased use of computing devices in traditional classrooms, technological advancements such as mass access to revolutionary communication technologies have prompted the adoption of web-based tools for educational purposes. Educational service providers are deploying web-based platforms that allow students to access resources that supplement classroom instruction and allow students to share their learning experience with their peers. Hundreds of hours of high quality learning content and thousands of educational games that enrich learning interactions are accessible through mobile/tablet devices. Harmonious use of these resources and scientific developments offer opportunities for breaking new ground in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for education. Techniques developed in the field of AI for Education (AIEd) such as student/tutor/domain modelling, integrated assessment, tutorial dialog, automated scaffolding, data mining and pedagogical agents can further improve the effectiveness of learning in groups. On the other hand, multi-party interaction and massive online learning platforms present AIEd researchers with exciting next generation challenges. The IJAIEd Special Issue on Intelligent Support for Learning in Groups (ISLG) includes four articles that give us a brief peek at recent advances in some of these Int J Artif Intell Educ (2014) 24:1–7 DOI 10.1007/s40593-013-0013-5

An Affective-Motivational Interface for a Pedagogical Agent

This research is framed within the affective computing, which explains the importance of emotions in human cognition (decision making, perception, interaction and human intelligence). Applying this approach to a pedagogical agent is an essential part to enhance the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process of an intelligent learning system. This work focuses on the design of the inference engine that will give life to the interface, where the latter is represented by a pedagogical agent. The inference engine is based on an affective-motivational model. This model is implemented by using artificial intelligence technique called fuzzy cognitive maps.

Activism, agency and archive: British activists and the representation of educational colonies in Spain during and after the Spanish Civil War

In the late 1930s the Spanish Civil War captured the international imagination to an extraordinary degree. As in other countries British men and women were moved to intervene directly and the memory of the war, and of British participation in it, has held an enduring appeal in the UK. The Civil War was also notable for its use of the visual as a weapon of propaganda, and the Spanish Republican Government deployed visual imagery to great effect as an instrument through which it exhibited its progressive educational and welfare reforms to an international audience. This article focuses on the visual and textual representations of displaced children in Republican educational colonies in Spain that are preserved in British archive collections. Taking as its starting point a series of photographs of children in colonies gathered together as part of the International Brigade Memorial Archive in London, the paper will consider the construction, use, and circulation of these images and associated texts by British and American political and humanitarian networks and their subsequent collection and preservation in British archival institutions. The paper will assess the effectiveness of the images and texts as pedagogical and political agents and explore how their meaning shifted as they travelled through a range of performative spaces on a journey from their construction as artefacts designed initially to record and communicate the Spanish Republic’s progressive educational project, to commemorative objects in the archive.

Do Pedagogical Agents Enhance Software Training?

This study investigates whether a tutorial for software training can be enhanced by adding a pedagogical agent, and whether the type of agent matters (i.e., cognitive, motivational, or mixed). The cognitive agent was designed to stimulate students to process their experiences actively. The motivational agent was designed to increase perceived task relevance and self-efficacy beliefs. A mixed agent combined these features. Process and product data were recorded during and after software training of students from the upper grades of vocational education (M age = 16.2 years). Comparison of scores on performance measures during training revealed a significant advantage of working with the motivational and mixed agents for two important motivational mediators for learning (i.e., strategy systematicity and mood). All students were highly successful during training, improving from an average 30% task completion score on the pretest to a 77% posttest score. On a retention measure 3 weeks later, task completion was still at 66%. Working with the motivational and control agents yielded significantly higher retention scores, whereas working with the motivational and mixed agents led to significantly higher scores on task relevance and self-efficacy beliefs after training. The discussion reflects on the possibilities for improving the internal and external properties of the agents.

Do Pedagogical Agents Enhance Software Training

This study investigates whether a tutorial for software training can be enhanced by adding a pedagogical agent, and whether the type of agent matters i.e., cognitive, motivational, or mixed. The co...

Gender differences in the use and benefit of advanced learning technologies for mathematics.

We provide evidence of persistent gender effects for students using advanced adaptive technology while learning mathematics. This technology improves each gender’s learning and affective predispositions toward mathematics, but specific features in the software help either female or male students. Gender differences were seen in the students’ style of use of the system, motivational goals, affective needs, and cognitive/affective benefits, as well as the impact of affective interventions involving pedagogical agents. We describe 4 studies, with hundreds of students in public schools over several years, which suggest that technology responses should probably be customized to each gender. This article shows differential results before, during, and after the use of adaptive tutoring software, indicating that digital tutoring systems can be an important supplement to mathematics classrooms but that male and female students should be addressed differently. Female students were more receptive than male students to seeking and accepting help provided by the tutoring system and to spending time seeing the hints; thus, they had a consistent general trend to benefit more from it, especially when affective learning companions were present. In addition, female students expressed positively valenced emotions most often and exhibited more productive behaviors when exposed to female characters; these affective pedagogical agents encouraged effort and perseverance. This was not the case for male students, who had more positive outcomes when no learning companion was present and their worst affective and cognitive outcomes when the female character was present.

Courseware development with animated pedagogical agents in learning system to improve learning motivation

The addition of animated pedagogical agents (APAs) in computer-assisted learning (CAL) systems could successfully enhance students' learning motivation and engagement in learning activities. Conventionally, the APA incorporated multimedia materials are constructed through the cooperation of teachers and software programmers. However, the thinking and technical gap between two roles, a concept/content provider (teacher) and an implementer (software programmer), may lead to the concept distortion and loss in the final teaching material implementations. This often results in preventing a teacher from preparing his or her own APA-based multimedia learning systems. This study aims to develop a courseware to facilitate the CAL through the combination of the two roles into a single one and then teachers can use it freely by themselves. The courseware can help teachers to develop appropriate multimedia instructional materials incorporating APAs, which attracts students' attention and enhances their interest in learning. Furthermore, in this study two separate trial experiments were conducted to measure the teachers' satisfaction with the courseware and students' learning motivation after using APA-based multimedia learning systems. The results show that the participating teachers were satisfied with the courseware and would like to apply it in their instruction. Moreover, the participating students were strongly motivated by the customized APA-based multimedia learning systems. Therefore, the proposed courseware could give teachers a good opportunity to add pedagogical value to the curriculum, so that students' learning interest and motivation could be enhanced.

Design and implementation of an intelligent virtual environment for improving speaking and listening skills

In this paper, we present an intelligent architecture, called intelligent virtual environment for language learning, with embedded pedagogical agents for improving listening and speaking skills of non-native English language learners. The proposed architecture integrates virtual environments into the Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning. This architecture supports visual, auditory, and haptic channels of interaction. It allows pedagogical ideas about language skills to be implemented and validated with a minimum design time. Moreover, we design a computational model to evaluate learner's proficiency level, and an automatic adaptation mechanism which adjusts to the learner's learning curve. We have implemented two scenarios based on the proposed architecture to teach learners how to communicate in public places such as airports and TV stores. Inputs to this system include learner's speech and hand motion, and outputs include graphical scenes, force feedback, and speech by a few embodied agents. Throughout interactions, agents discover the proficiency level of the learner and customize the level of communication complexity accordingly. The system is tested on 10 subjects. Experimental results show 14% increase in the number of proper replies, 3% decrease in grammatical errors, 16% decrease in pronunciation duration, and 11% increase in learners' proficiency level within three trials.

A Procedure to Create a Pedagogic Conversational Agent in Secondary Physics and Chemistry Education

Pedagogic Conversational Agents are computer applications that can interact with students in natural language. They have been used with satisfactory results on the instruction of several domains. The authors believe that they could also be useful for the instruction of Secondary Physics and Chemistry Education. Therefore, in this paper, the authors present a procedure to create an agent for that domain. First, teachers have to introduce the exercises with their correct answers. Secondly, students will be presented the exercises, and if the students know the answer, and if it is correct, more difficult exercises will be presented. Otherwise, step-by-step natural language support will be provided to guide the student towards the solution. It is the authors’ hypothesis that this innovative teaching method will be satisfactory and useful for teachers and students, and that by following the procedure more computer programmers can be encouraged to develop agents for other domains to be used by teachers and students at class.

How Effective are Pedagogical Agents for Learning? A Meta-Analytic Review

Research on the use of software programs and tools such as pedagogical agents has peaked over the last decade. Pedagogical agents are on-screen characters that facilitate instruction. This meta-analysis examined the effect of using pedagogical agents on learning by reviewing 43 studies involving 3,088 participants. Analysis of the results indicated that pedagogical agents produced a small but significant effect on learning. The overall mean effect size was moderated by the contextual and methodological features of the studies. The findings revealed that the use of pedagogical agents were more beneficial for K-12 students than post-secondary students. Pedagogical agents that communicated with students using on-screen text facilitated learning more effectively than agents that communicated using narration. The findings of this study have implications for advancing theory and practice, as well as highlighting productive future directions for research.

Using Conceptual Models to Implement Natural Language Pedagogic Agent-Student Conversations

The last several decades have seen a growing trend in incorporating pedagogic conversational agents in interactive learning environments. Software systems have increasingly integrated intelligent virtual agents that can interact with students in natural language to fulfill specific tasks such as reviewing content or providing tutor training. The use of an agent-based approach in education has shown many benefits. However, certain design and development issues are still unresolved. This article focuses on the potentials of employing conceptual models to generate agent-student dialog and introduces a new mixed-initiative general domain agent called JARO. The authors report on the procedure for creating the initial conceptual model and discuss its use in guiding agent-student conversations adapted to students' individual learning needs. The stages of implementation of the model as well as the model's viability tested in a proof-of-concept experiment are addressed.

Planning-Based Social Partners for Children with Autism

This paper describes the design and implementation of a planning-based socially intelligent agent built to help young children with Autism Spectrum Conditions acquire social communication skills. We explain how planning technology allowed us to satisfy the requirements relating to the agent's design that we identified through our consultations with children and carers as well as our review of best practices for autism intervention. We discuss the design principles we implemented, the engineering challenges we faced and the lessons we learned in building the pedagogical agent. We conclude by presenting extensive experimental results concerning the agent's efficacy.

Avatars with Sex Appeal as Pedagogical Agents: Attractiveness, Trustworthiness, Expertise, and Gender Differences

The study focused on the use of pedagogical agents with sex appeal in a computer-assisted learning environment. The study adopted a 2 (male/female) × 3 (demure/seductive/overtly sexual) experimental design. The primary analysis consisted of 2 parts: (a) comparing the impact of effective learning on students' perceptions of demure, seductive, or overtly sexual pedagogical agents, and (b) exploring gender differences in the usage of pedagogical agents with sex appeal. The empirical study results revealed that the sex appeal of female pedagogical agents is more helpful in effective learning than those of male agents. The sexy appearances of pedagogical agents are perceived by students as attractive, untrustworthy, and unprofessional. A seductive appearance in pedagogical agents is the most beneficial for effective learning than demure or overtly sexual ones. Students' and pedagogical agents' gender affect the impact of pedagogical agents with sex appeal on effective learning.

An Animated Pedagogical Agent to Support Problem-Based Learning

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a learning theory that emphasizes collaboration and teamwork to solve a problem. However, a problem that frequently occurs in the implementation of PBL is the presence of passive students who usually have difficulty working in teams or who are unmotivated during the process of teaching and learning. An aspect that can positively influence the implementation process of the PBL is the recommendation of context-sensitive learning objects (LOs). Thus, this paper presents an approach based on an animated pedagogical agent and three other agents for the detection of passive students and for the recommendation of LOs in accordance with the students' context to improve the learning process of PBL.