Deictic and Emotive Communication In Animated Pedagogical Agents

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.

1997

Abstract Animated pedagogical agents offer great promise for knowledge-based learning environments. In addition to coupling feedback capabilities with a strong visual presence, these agents play a critical role in motivating students. The extent to which they exhibit life-like behaviors strongly increases their motivational impact, but these behaviors must always complement and never interfere with students' problem solving.

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.

2006

A well-established effect of animated agents in educational and other contexts is their potential to motivate and engage. ''Increased motivation in users'' is also one of the more frequent answers given to the question, ''What is gained by adding an animated pedagogical agent to an intelligent tutoring system?''

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.

1997

Animated pedngogical ngents offer great promise for leaming environments. In addition to their significant motivational henefits, these intriguing lifelike characters can also play an important pedngogical role. Introduced into a rich leaming environment, animated pedngogical ngents could increase prohlem-solving effectiveness hy providing students with customized advice.

2002

Artificial Intelligence is an important area in the field of Computing applied to Education in terms of technological implementation. This paper describes IVTE, Intelligent Virtual Teaching Environment, implemented by Multi-Agents technology including pedagogical features, represented by Guilly. Guilly is a Animated Pedagogical Agent that acts based on a student model and teaching strategies. Keyword: Computer Science, Education, Learning Environment, Cognition, Games.

2004

Although animated pedagogical agents are frequently found in intelligent tutoring systems and interactive learning environments, their effect on users' attitudes and learning requires further investigation. This paper reports findings of a field study designed to investigate the impact of animated pedagogical agents on primary school children's attitudes to and interactions with the StoryStation system. Sixty pupils used either a version of StoryStation with an animated agent interface or an equivalent one with a normal graphical user interface to write a story. Analysis of questionnaire data indicated that pupils who used the agent version rated StoryStation more highly than those who used the non-agent version. Analysis of program use revealed that girls tended to interact more with the agent version, while boys tended to interact more with the non-agent version.

2002

Recent advances in the development of intelligent tutoring systems include the addition of animated conversational agents that play the role of tutors (Person and Graesser 2002). These pedagogical agents can be programmed to

Cognition and Instruction, 2001

College students (in Experiment 1) and 7th-grade students (in Experiment 2) learned how to design the roots, stem, and leaves of plants to survive in 8 different environments through a computer-based multimedia lesson. They learned by interacting with an animated pedagogical agent who spoke to them (Group PA) or received identical graphics and explanations as on-screen text without a pedagogical agent (Group No PA). Group PA outperformed Group No PA on transfer tests and interest ratings but not on retention tests. To investigate further the basis for this personal agent effect, we varied the interactivity of the agent-based lesson (Experiment 3) and found an