Pedagogical Agents Research Articles

A Comparison between Online Quizzes and Serious Games: The Case of Friend Me

The rapid changes in digital technology have had a substantial influence on education, resulting in the development of learning technologies (LTs) such as multimedia, computer-based training, intelligent tutoring systems, serious games, social media, and pedagogical agents. Serious games have demonstrated their effectiveness in several domains, while there is contradictory data on their efficiency in modifying behavior and their possible disadvantages. Serious games are games that are specifically created to fulfill a primary goal other than entertainment. The objective of our study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a serious game designed for the self-assessment of students concerning their knowledge of web technologies on students with an equivalent online quiz that uses the same collection of questions. The primary hypotheses we stated were that those utilizing the serious game would experience better results in terms of engagement, subjective experience, and learning compared to those using the online quiz. To examine these research questions, the IMI questionnaire, the total number of completed questions, and post-test grades were utilized to compare the two groups, which consisted of 34 undergraduate students. Our findings indicate that the serious game users did not have a better experience or better learning outcomes, but that they engaged more, answering significantly more questions. Future steps include finding more participants and extending the experimental period.

Investigating pedagogical agents' scaffolding of self‐regulated learning in relation to learners' subgoals

AbstractIntelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) incorporate pedagogical agents (PAs) to scaffold learners' self‐regulated learning (SRL) via prompts and feedback to promote learners' monitoring and regulation of their cognitive, affective, metacognitive and motivational processes to achieve their (sub)goals. This study examines PAs' effectiveness in scaffolding and teaching SRL during learning with MetaTutor, an ITS on the human circulatory system. Undergraduates (N = 118) were randomly assigned to a condition: Control Condition (i.e. learners could only self‐initiate SRL strategies) and Prompt and Feedback Condition (i.e. PAs prompted learners to engage in SRL). Learners' log‐file data captured when strategies were used, the initiator of the strategy (i.e. learner and PA), and the relevance of instructional content pages in relation to learner subgoals. While results showed that PAs were effective scaffolders of SRL in which they prompted learners to engage in SRL strategies more when content was relevant towards their subgoals and as time on page and task increased, there were mixed findings about the effectiveness of PAs as teachers of SRL. Findings show how production rules guiding PA prompts can improve their scaffolding and teaching of SRL across the learning task – through contextualizing SRL strategies to the instructional content and in relation to the relevance of the content to learners' subgoals.Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Most learners struggle to efficiently and effectively use self‐regulated learning (SRL) strategies to attain goals and subgoals. There is a need for SRL to be scaffolded for learners to manage multiple goals and subgoals while learning about complex STEM topics. Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) typically incorporate pedagogical agents (PAs) to prompt learners to engage in SRL strategy and provide feedback. There are mixed findings on the effectiveness of PAs in scaffolding learners' SRL. What this paper adds We consider PAs not only scaffolders but also teachers of SRL. Results showed that while PAs encouraged the use of SRL strategies when the content was relevant to subgoals, they did not discourage the use of SRL strategies when the content was not relevant. Results for this study were mixed in their support of PAs as teachers of SRL. Learners increasingly depended on PAs to prompt SRL strategies as time on task progressed. Implications for practice and/or policy PAs are effective scaffolders of SRL with more research needed to understand their role as teachers of SRL. PA scaffolding is more essential as time on task progresses. When deploying specific cognitive and metacognitive SRL strategies, the relevance of the content to learners' subgoals should be taken into account.

On the Pedagogical Character of (Animated) Pedagogical Agents: A Review of Recent (2009–2022) Research

On the Pedagogical Character of (Animated) Pedagogical Agents: A Review of Recent (2009–2022) Research

Effects of Pedagogical Agent on Learner’s Cognitive Load and Intrinsic Motivation: A Systematic Literature Review

Effects of Pedagogical Agent on Learner’s Cognitive Load and Intrinsic Motivation: A Systematic Literature Review

Examining the Impact of Pedagogical Agents on Student Performance in Mathematics

Examining the Impact of Pedagogical Agents on Student Performance in Mathematics

Digital game-based learning: Pedagogical agent and feedback types on achievement, flow experience, and cognitive load

Digital game-based learning: Pedagogical agent and feedback types on achievement, flow experience, and cognitive load

Revisiting contextual relevance: pedagogical agent appearance

Early research on pedagogical agents centered on functionality within multimedia environments. A specific, yet under-researched area was the contextual relevance of the agent’s appearance, leaving its validity neither confirmed nor refuted. This study investigated contextual relevance using a humanoid agent, a fox character agent, and a no-agent condition. Results didn’t conclusively support contextual relevance as the character agent was rated significantly higher on agent credibility and no significant differences on cognitive load. However, the humanoid agent outperformed the character and no-agent conditions in free recall, suggesting the need for further exploration of this concept.

Recognizing and Relating to the Race/Ethnicity and Gender of Animated Pedagogical Agents

This study examined how well people can recognize and relate to animated pedagogical agents of varying ethnicities/races and genders. For both Study 1 (realistic-style agents) and Study 2 (cartoon-style agents), participants viewed brief video clips of virtual agents of varying racial/ethnic categories and gender types and then identified their race/ethnicity and gender and rated how human-like and likable the agent appeared. Participants were highly accurate in identifying Black and White agents but were less accurate for Asian, Indian, and Hispanic agents. Participants were accurate in recognizing gender differences. Participants rated all types of agents as moderately human-like, except for White agents. Likability ratings were lowest for White and male agents. The same pattern of results was obtained across two independent studies with different participants and different onscreen agents, which indicates that the results are not solely due to one specific set of agents. Consistent with the Media Equation Hypothesis and the Alliance Hypothesis, this work shows that people are sensitive to the race/ethnicity and gender of onscreen agents and relate to them differently. These findings have implications for how to design animated pedagogical agents for improved multimedia learning environments in the future and serve as a crucial first step in highlighting the possibility and feasibility of incorporating diverse onscreen virtual agents into educational computer software.

Utilizing interactive visual multimedia to improve business capabilities and financial management competencies of women vegetable farmers

ABSTRACT This study examined the usefulness of interactive visual multimedia in improving business capabilities and financial management competencies of women vegetable farmers. The researchers utilized a quasi-experimental design and assigned participants to a training group (n = 270) and a no-training group (n-270). The result of the study showed a significant main effect of interactive visual multimedia and business capabilities and financial management competencies of women vegetable farmers. Additional results showed no interactive effect of cultivation characteristics such as the source of labour, farm size, years of cultivation and the season for vegetable cultivation. However, there was a significant contributing role of reason for the cultivation of vegetables. Women farmers who cultivate for commercial purposes were more influenced by the training than those who cultivate for consumption. Nonetheless, the training influenced 54% of those who cultivate vegetables for consumption to indicate their intention to commence commercial cultivation. When asked to indicate the pedagogical agents that influence the learning of business and financial management capabilities, 76% indicated a combination of co-learners and tutors. The researchers highlighted the implications of these results on empowerment and made suggestions on how to empower women farmers through skill acquisition using interactive learning engagements.

Charisma and learning: designing charismatic behaviours for virtual human tutors

Charisma as defined in the Oxford Dictionary, is the compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others. It is a powerful device of communication because it is the primary way humans signal interpersonal closeness, willingness to communicate, and feelings toward one another. Without exception, charisma is very crucial in the learning process in individuals. It makes the teachers more influential, causing learners to listen more intently to what they have to say and subsequently boosting their learning performance at the end of the day.
 Virtual learning has become a widely adopted phenomenon all around the world, with the aid of virtual humans (computer-generated simulations of human beings), who, unlike real humans, provide consistency in the delivery of accurate knowledge, engaging role-plays, and appropriate feedback. Furthermore, pedagogical agents have played a significant role in virtual learning, and virtual tutors and companions falling under this category. Incorporating charismatic behaviors in virtual human tutors has become a quest for developers, due to their awareness on how impactful it can be in virtual learning. How can such behaviors be realized in a virtual character? Developers are incorporating charismatic traits in virtual human tutors which include: portraying a high degree of engagement with their students, proficiency in their subject matter, organized and very profound in their knowledge of the subject. Taiwanese authors researched the topic of teaching and charisma. The Statistical results obtained supported the virtual human tutors’ charisma has a positive influence on inducing the students’ learning interest.
 Feelings of isolation that may be faced by a student in online learning are overcome by the fully-present and approachable trait of the charismatic virtual tutor. The ability of a virtual human tutor to be charismatic boosts instructor immediacy; behavior that brings the instructor and the students closer together in terms of perceived distance.
 Overall, we conclude that developers’ endeavor to design charismatic behavior for virtual human tutors is advantageous to the highly advancing educational field and the use of Artificial Intelligence in education.

Do a pedagogical agent's clothing and an animated video's setting affect learning?

Pedagogical agents are often used to enhance social cues in learning materials. The inclusion of pedagogical agents raises several design questions, for example on what kind of clothing the agent should wear. Further, it is not yet clear how the setting of an animated learning video (i.e., the digitally created background) affects learning. In an online experiment (N = 200), we investigated whether creating thematically appropriate clothing and setting has some added value in that it improves learning outcomes in comparison to more neutral assets. Whereas all participants acquired knowledge from the animated video, there were no main effects of clothing and setting for any of the dependent variables, but an interaction for learning outcomes (), indicating that the appropriately dressed agent worked better combined with the inappropriate setting than with the appropriate setting. Overall, given those non-significant main effects and the small effect size of the interaction, there seem to be some degrees of freedom for designers of pedagogical agents in animated learning videos. However, these degrees of freedom may be limited to at least moderate (i.e., neutral) levels of appropriateness.

The Impact of Intelligent Pedagogical Agents’ Interventions on Student Behavior and Performance in Open-Ended Game Design Environments

Research has shown that free-form Game-Design (GD) environments can be very effective in fostering Computational Thinking (CT) skills at a young age. However, some students can still need some guidance during the learning process due to the highly open-ended nature of these environments. Intelligent Pedagogical Agents (IPAs) can be used to provide personalized assistance in real-time to alleviate this challenge. This paper presents our results in evaluating such an agent deployed in a real-word free-form GD learning environment to foster CT in the early K-12 education, Unity-CT. We focus on the effect of repetition by comparing student behaviors between no intervention, 1-shot, and repeated intervention groups for two different errors that are known to be challenging in the online lessons of Unity-CT. Our findings showed that the agent was perceived very positively by the students and the repeated intervention showed promising results in terms of helping students make fewer errors and more correct behaviors, albeit only for one of the two target errors. Building from these results, we provide insights on how to provide IPA interventions in free-form GD environments.

Unsuccessful pedagogical situations

On the basis of the previous theoretical and practical research conducted by the author, in this paper the concept of pedagogical situation is studied. The suggested classification of pedagogical situations is based on the ability of a pedagogical situation to solve pedagogical tasks, reach pedagogical problems, achieve a pedagogical effect and thus to become a pedagogical event. On these basis as well as on the logic and practice of a teacher's everyday work, the three types of situations were previously identified. One type of these situations is described in this paper. The goal of such situations is unachievable, which means that the situation can not change from a potential situation to an actual situation. The goal-oriented principle of analysis opens up the prospect of establishing relationships between all the parameters of the situation and the personal characteristics of its participants. The scheme for describing pedagogical situations logically includes the following components: participants (teachers and students a potential pedagogical agent), goal/task, conditions (locus).

The Effect of the Integration of Metacognitive and Motivation Scaffolding Through a Pedagogical Agent on Self- and Co-Regulation Learning

Nowadays, online learning has become commonplace in higher education. Various factors influence the success of online learning. Factors such as low self-regulation and co-regulation learning skills can affect student engagement and motivation in online learning activities. Therefore, it is essential to provide external support in the online learning process. Pedagogical agents are one solution to increasing self-regulation and co-regulation learning in online learning environments. This study aims to determine the effect of integrating metacognitive and motivation scaffolding support provided through pedagogical agents on self-regulation and co-regulation learning skills. This study uses a mixed-methods explanatory sequential approach. A quasi-experimental method of the non-equivalent type (pretest and posttest) control group is used for quantitative data collection, and an in-depth survey is used to analyze qualitative data. The results showed that the learning support provided by pedagogical agents who act as scaffolders using metacognitive and motivation scaffolding integration has a significant impact on increasing students' self-regulation and co-regulation learning skills. Also, the results of qualitative data analysis supported the findings obtained from quantitative data. Research limitations and suggestions for further research are presented at the end of this article.

The Dog as an Unaware Pedagogical Agent in a School Reading Course

ABSTRACT In this study, we observed pupils reading to a dog in a school reading course and asked: How can the pedagogic rituals of schooling explain the dog’s role as a non-judgmental listener? In a qualitative case-study design, video observation was conducted over seven months in a Norwegian primary school to observe year-three pupils’ (average age 8 years) reading experiences with a dog as part of their ordinary reading instruction course. The dog was a male, 10-year-old standard poodle. The children’s school and their socioeconomic status (SES) were average for Norway. Fourteen children participated, four girls and ten boys, with a total of 112 reading sessions with the dog. Interviews and online data supplemented the observations. A narrative analysis found three main categories of the reading sessions: opening sequence, reading sequence, and concluding sequence. To report our findings in this paper, we present a typical narrative informed by the three categories. We conclude that the role of the dog as a non-judgmental listener in a school reading course can be explained by an invisible pedagogy ritualizing the sessions: The ritual assigns the dog a unique educational role in the school setting as a hybrid between animal and human; an unaware pedagogical agent. When reading to the dog, the instructional intention is reinterpreted as a game of pretense that is potentially enjoyable for the pupils and reduces stress.

Twenty-five Years of Learning with Pedagogical Agents: History, Barriers, and Opportunities

Twenty-five Years of Learning with Pedagogical Agents: History, Barriers, and Opportunities

GPT-3-Driven Pedagogical Agents to Train Children’s Curious Question-Asking Skills

GPT-3-Driven Pedagogical Agents to Train Children’s Curious Question-Asking Skills

A Systematic Review of Voice-based Intelligent Virtual Agents in EFL Education

Since its debut in the field of education nearly three decades ago, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been considered as a powerful tool to facilitate new paradigms for instructional design and innovative educational practice in the form of intelligent tutoring systems, chatbots, teaching robots and adaptive learning systems among others. Recent technological advances in the adjacent areas of natural language processing, machine learning and computer graphics focusing primarily on design features that can improve their human-like qualities of naturalness and believability as human interlocutors have also amplified new application opportunities for Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) or Animated Pedagogical Agents (APAs) within the area of Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL). Although AI-powered IVAs hold the potential to enhance the learning process in nearly any knowledge domain and personalize automation in teaching by embodying different roles in the learning environment, strikingly few studies have empirically attempted to assess IVAs impact on L2 learners’ academic achievement when learning English as a Foreign (EFL) so far. This study addresses this issue via a systematic review of relevant interventionist IVA studies that were conducted in EFL settings and published within the 2015-2020 timeframe examining IVAs key affordances, major barriers in their adoption for language learning purposes, and the CALL research trends currently prevalent on the topic. Pedagogical implications for the effective implementation of IVA technology in L2 contexts are discussed and future research avenues in the area are highlighted.

A complex systems approach to analyzing pedagogical agents’ scaffolding of self-regulated learning within an intelligent tutoring system

A complex systems approach to analyzing pedagogical agents’ scaffolding of self-regulated learning within an intelligent tutoring system

The zoomorphic effect: A contribution to the study of images of pedagogical agents for children's learning in instructional videos

AbstractBackgroundZoomorphism, an obverse of conventional anthropomorphism, has been shown in many cases to be a powerful tool with respect to the metaphorical use of animals.ObjectivesThis study introduced zoomorphism into the instructional video design of pedagogical agents (PAs).MethodWe first developed three image sets, each of which corresponded to a type of zoomorphic PA image construct (full panda, a human face with a panda body, and a human body with panda head imagery). Then, we conducted an image‐screening experiment in which 177 second‐grade students from a primary school were asked to select their favourite PA image for each image construct set. We used a realistic human PA as the baseline. Next, 114 second‐grade students from another school were randomly assigned to learn instructional videos on the topic of pandas using a PA with one of four imageries.Results and ConclusionsANOVA and Kruskal–Wallis tests indicated that students presented with PAs with full‐panda imagery achieved significantly higher learning performance, learning experience, social presence, and learning interest than those presented with other imageries of PAs. The regression results showed that the effect of zoomorphic PAs with full‐panda imagery on learning performance was exerted in a direct way and that its effect on learning experience was mediated by social presence and learning interest.ImplicationsOur findings suggest that zoomorphic appearance is an essential quality for video learning that merits further investigation for the efficient imagery construction of PAs.