Workshop Goals
- Assess and summarize the empirical status of pedagogical agents and the results of 20 years of research. What did we set out to do? What have we learned? What has worked and what hasn’t? Has research on PAs had sufficient rigor? When is the use of a pedagogical agent appropriate? What are the most important things to consider when building a new pedagogical agent?
- Review the applications, roles, underlying technologies, and connections to affective/emotional issues of learning. What roles can and should PAs play in educational technologies? What do emerging technologies suggest is both possible and appropriate for future research? How does affect/emotion fit, both in terms of interactions with PAs and outcomes.
- Identify critical open issues and plans for future research. What is next for PAs? What has been neglected in the last 20 years and what can we do about it? What emerging problems await the field? How can AI researchers, education researchers, and so on make sense of PA research?
Background reading
The body of literature on PAs is understandably enormous. After 20 years of work much has been explored and learned about how to design, build, deploy, and evaluate pedagogical agents. A number of recent review/synthesis articles have attempted to pull this work together, often with mixed and even contradictory conclusions (Domagk, 2010; Harley & Azevedo, 2014; Heidig & Clarebout, 2011; Krämer & Bente, 2010; Schroeder & Adesope, 2014; Schroeder, Adesope, & Gilbert, 2013; Veletsianos & Russell, 2014). And much of the earlier research on PAs is still highly relevant for discussion and envisioning (Atkinson, 2002; A. Baylor, 2011; A. L. Baylor & Kim, 2004; Clarebout, Elen, Johnson, & Shaw, 2002; Lester et al., 1997; Rickel et al., 2002). Although very far from comprehensive, one goal of the workshop will be to create a recommended reading list and annotated bibliography of the most influential papers from the field.
References
Atkinson, R. (2002). Optimizing Learning From Examples Using Animated Pedagogical Agents. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(2), 416-427. doi: citeulike-article-id:86378
Baylor, A. (2011). The design of motivational agents and avatars. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59(2), 291-300. doi: 10.1007/s11423-011-9196-3
Baylor, A. L., & Kim, Y. (2004). Pedagogical Agent Design: The Impact of Agent Realism, Gender, Ethnicity, and Instructional Role (pp. 268-270).
Clarebout, G., Elen, J., Johnson, W. L., & Shaw, E. (2002). Animated pedagogical agents: An opportunity to be grasped? Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 11(3), 267-286.
Domagk, S. (2010). Do pedagogical agents facilitate learner motivation and learning outcomes?: The role of the appeal of agent’s appearance and voice. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 22(2), 84.
Harley, J., & Azevedo, R. (2014). Understanding Students’ Emotions during Interactions with Agent-Based Learning Environments: A Selective Review. In S. Trausan-Matu, K. Boyer, M. Crosby & K. Panourgia (Eds.), Intelligent Tutoring Systems (Vol. 8474, pp. 629-631): Springer International Publishing.
Heidig, S., & Clarebout, G. (2011). Do pedagogical agents make a difference to student motivation and learning? Educational Research Review, 6(1), 27-54.
Krämer, N., & Bente, G. (2010). Personalizing e-Learning. The Social Effects of Pedagogical Agents. Educational Psychology Review, 22(1), 71-87. doi: 10.1007/s10648-010-9123-x
Lester, J. C., Converse, S. A., Kahler, S. E., Barlow, S. T., Stone, B. A., & Bhogal, R. S. (1997). The persona effect: affective impact of animated pedagogical agents. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
Rickel, J., Marsella, S., Gratch, J., Hill, R., Traum, D., & Swartout, W. (2002). Toward a New Generation of Virtual Humans for Interactive Experiences. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 17(4), 32-38. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2002.1024750
Schroeder, N. L., & Adesope, O. O. (2014). A Systematic Review of Pedagogical Agents’ Persona, Motivation, and Cognitive Load Implications for Learners. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 46(3), 229-251.
Schroeder, N. L., Adesope, O. O., & Gilbert, R. B. (2013). How effective are pedagogical agents for learning? A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 49(1), 1-39.
Veletsianos, G., & Russell, G. (2014). Pedagogical Agents. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. Elen & M. J. Bishop (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (pp. 759-769): Springer New York.