Children's interactions with animated agents in an intelligent tutoring system (original) (raw)
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THE EFFECTS OF ANIMATED AGENTS ON STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTITUDES
Animated agents are electronic agents that interact with learners through voice, visuals or text and that carry human-like characteristics such as gestures and facial expressions with the purpose of creating a social learning environment, and provide information and guidance and when required feedback and motivation to students during their learning experience. The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of the use of pedagogical agents in learning materials designed in multimedia on the achievement and attitudes of students. A general evaluation of the research findings indicate that the use of multimedia software developed by using pedagogical agents positively affects student achievement and attitude. The achievement of the students who worked with the software significantly increased, but no significant difference in terms of different pedagogical agents was observed. The comparison of the student’s attitudes revealed no significant difference in terms of different pedagogical agents, yet the attitudes regarding “bearing human features” showed positively significant difference for the software with body shot of a real person. As it is seen in the unstructured interviews with the participants conducted during and after the experimental process, it should be stated that the students had positive attitudes towards the software and the use of pedagogical agent and expressed their liking.
Why Use an Animated Pedagogical Agent?
1999
A new paradigm has recently emerged for education and training: face-to-face interaction with intelligent, animated agents in interactive learning environments. The paradigm joins two previously distinct research areas. The rst area, animated interface agents 6, provides a new metaphor for human-computer interaction based on face-to-face dialogue. The second area, knowledge-based learning environments 17, seeks instructional software that can adapt to individual learners through the use of arti cial intelligence.
The use of animated agents in e‐learning environments: an exploratory, interpretive case study
ALT-J, 2006
There is increasing interest in the use of animated agents in e-learning environments. However, empirical investigations of their use in online education are limited. Our aim is to provide an empirically based framework for the development and evaluation of animated agents in e-learning environments. Findings suggest a number of challenges, including the multiple dialogue models that animated agents will need to accommodate, the diverse range of roles that pedagogical animated agents can usefully support, the dichotomous relationship that emerges between these roles and that of the lecturer, and student perception of the degree of autonomy that can be afforded to animated agents.
Animated pedagogical agents: Face-to-face interaction in interactive learning environments
2000
Abstract. Recent years have witnessed the birth of a new paradigm for learning environments: animated pedagogical agents. These lifelike autonomous characters cohabit learning environments with students to create rich, face-to-face learning interactions. This opens up exciting new possibilities; for example, agents can demonstrate complex tasks, employ locomotion and gesture to focus students' attention on the most salient aspect of the task at hand, and convey emotional responses to the tutorial situation.
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2006
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A field experiment with an animated intelligent tutor in Portugal
2014 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2014
This paper describes the results of a pedagogical experiment using an Intelligent Tutoring System that also implements an Animated Pedagogical Agent. The study was performed in Portugal, as an attempt to replicate some experiments performed in the USA, and in order to verify the usefulness of the Pedagogical Agent in a different country with distinct culture. After running the experiment and analyzing the data, we have concluded that in our specific case, we did not find any evidence that the pedagogical agent could boost instructional outcomes of students in Portugal. Our data is showing no statistically significant differences between the control, and experimental groups. Additionally, we have also found that the control group actually performed slightly better than the experimental group. As a result, our study is giving some good evidences that a Pedagogical Agent that was developed, tested and successfully used in one country, may not be successful when used in a different country.
The increase in the use of animation for educational purposes and especially virtual characters known as animated pedagogical agents (APAs) has open questions about the effectiveness of this tool during the learning process (Frechette & Moreno, 2010) For that reason several studies had focused their attention in the psychological and social aspects involved during the process and its relation with the use of the APAs. Character designers and animators might face the responsibility of creating agents that successfully fulfil a pedagogical purpose in sundry educational virtual environments. This research reviews a number of studies- from the perspective of psychoanalysis- that highlights main characteristics of the agents, its roles and socio-psychological impacts. Therefore it describes a general set of design considerations that might be useful for character designers, when creating an animated pedagogical agent (APA), building a bridge to connect design concerns and the knowledge reviewed before. In conclusion, to succeed in the design of an APA, designers might consider several psychological and social factors that are projected in the APAs graphic design and might have an impact in the learner’s cognitive process when learning with an animated pedagogical agent in virtual educational environments. Key words Animated Pedagogical Agent (APA), virtual educational environment, character design, socio-psychological factors, e-learning.