The Effect of Pedagogical Agent Persona on Performance, Self-Efficacy, and Attitudes in Adult Learners in an Online Environment

Pedagogical agents, virtual avatars that are often included in online training or educational modules, have been studied in a variety of disciplines to determine the extent to which their inclusion in online or multimedia learning environments may influence both cognitive and affective outcomes in learners. The present study examined the effect of a peer-like pedagogical agent providing motivational messaging in an online English language learning environment to determine if the agent will positively affect college students’ performance, self-efficacy, and attitude in comparison to a control group. All participants studied an online, self-paced English grammar module, either with (treatment version) or without (control version) a peer-like motivating pedagogical agent. The study also sought to determine if learners would perceive the agent as having a distinct persona. The study found no statistically significant difference between the treatment group and the control group on performance, self-efficacy, and attitude. However, for both the treatment group and the control group, student performance and self-efficacy were significantly improved after the online English module. In addition, the participants perceived the agent as having a distinct persona

Designing an engaging learning universe for situated interactions in virtual environments

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Studies related to the Virtual Learning approach are conducted almost exclusively in Distance Learning contexts, and focus on the development of frameworks or taxonomies that classify the different ways of teaching and learning. Researchers may be dealing with the topic of interactivity (avatars and immersion are key components), yet they do so they mainly focusing on the interactions that take place within the virtual world. It is the virtual world that consists the primary medium for communication and interplay. However, the lines are hard to be drawn when it comes to examining and taxonomising the impact of interactions on motivation and engagement as a synergy of learners’ concurrent presence. This study covers this gap and sheds light on this lack—or, at least, inadequacy—of literature and research on the interactions that take place both in the physical and the virtual environment at the same time. In addition, it explores the impact of the instructional design decisions on increasing the learners’ incentives for interplay when trying to make sense of the virtual world, thus leading them to attain higher levels of engagement. To evaluate the potential of interactions holistically and not just unilaterally, a series of experiments were conducted in the context of different Hybrid Virtual Learning units, with the participation of Computer Science & Technology students. One of the goals was to examine the learners’ thoughts and preconceptions regarding the use of virtual worlds as an educational tool. Then, during the practical sessions, the focus was placed on monitoring students’ actions and interactions in both the physical and the virtual environment. Consequently, students were asked as a feedback to report their overall opinion on these actions and interactions undertaken. The study draws a new research direction, beyond the idea of immersion and the development of subject-specific educational interventions. The conclusions provide suggestions and guidelines to educators and instructional designers who wish to offer interactive and engaging learning activities to their students, as well as a taxonomy of the different types of interactions that take place in Hybrid Virtual Learning contexts

International Perspectives of Distance Learning in Higher Education

This book, written by authors representing 12 countries and five continents, is a collection of international perspectives on distance learning and distance learning implementations in higher education. The perspectives are presented in the form of practical case studies of distance learning implementations, research studies on teaching and learning in distance learning environments, and conceptual and theoretical frameworks for designing and developing distance learning tools, courses and programs. The book will appeal to distance learning practitioners, researchers, and higher education administrators. To address the different needs and interests of audience members, the book is organized into five sections: Distance Education Management, Distance Education and Teacher Development, Distance Learning Pedagogy, Distance Learning Students, and Distance Learning Educational Tools

Hybridization of signaling principle and Nielsen's design guideline in a mobile application

Many educational mobile applications available in the market use multimedia principles in several aspects. However, the user interface design component is often disregarded. Therefore, such applications are less effective in engaging users in learning content with excitement and motivation. Therefore, this project is being worked on to meet those needs. A study on mobile applications hybridized with the Signaling principle and Nielsen guidelines through the construction of the NSPIxD model was carried out. Two mobile applications were designed, developed, and evaluated, and the Alessi and Trollip Instructional Design Models were adapted in both applications. The first mobile application, AHMA-0, serves as the base model. Instead, the AHMA-NSPIxD is integrated with the NSPIxD model, accompanied by a hybridization of the Signal principles and Nielsen design guidelines. Three parameters were measured, evaluated, and compared between AHMA-0 and AHMA-NSPIxD. The relevant parameters are; students’ knowledge and awareness of the topic and student motivation to use learning materials on the subject. It was found that AHMA-NSPIxD outperformed AHMA-0. Accordingly, it proves that practical applications can be produced at all levels by considering users' needs. Further, these findings emphasize the importance of critically considering user interfaces' technical and aesthetic aspects, contributing to advancing interaction design knowledge

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Digital Game-Based Learning with Adaptive Instructional Support

In an ideal world, education would offer every student an equal opportunity to fulfill their aspirations. The influences of individual differences would be drastically reduced if the instruction could provide individualized learning experiences that meet the unique needs and preferences of each student. Nonetheless, incorporating such instructional practices can cause extensive resource demands and practical challenges in traditional classroom teaching. Consequently, scholars have proposed the implementation of adaptation in digital game-based learning as a potential solution to provide instruction tailored to individual needs. The overall aim of this dissertation was to investigate the impacts of adaptive instructional support on the effectiveness of digital game-based learning. Three interventions were conducted. Data were gathered from over 400 Finnish students in grades 4–7 who were studying rational numbers using the Number Trace learning game. Value-added study designs were utilized to examine the specific motivational and learning effects of emotionally designed scaffolding and the motivational effects of task difficulty adaptation. The collected quantitative data consisted of pre-and posttest, repeated single-item in-game self-reported measurements of motivational outcomes, in-game metrics, and motivational trait measurements. In-game measurements of situational interest, self-efficacy, and perceived difficulty were employed multiple times during the learning activity. The results revealed that the employed in-game measurements of situational interest and self-efficacy were positively related to learning outcomes. It was found that the substantial downward adaptation of task difficulty resulted in significant increases in situational interest, and substantial upward adaptation of task difficulty significantly decreased situational interest. Only significant changes in task difficulty affected situational interest and perceived difficulty, and these changes occurred within a relatively short time frame. Additionally, it was discovered that the effectiveness of adaptive instructional support can be enhanced with emotional design. That is, emotionally designed scaffolding elicited significantly higher levels of situational interest and self-efficacy compared to scaffolding presented with emotionally neutral mathematical hatch marks. Furthermore, it was found that, a game-based learning environment incorporating scaffolding yielded substantial learning effects. However, the visualization of scaffolding had no impact on learning outcomes. This dissertation demonstrated that the effectiveness of game-based learning can be enhanced with adaptive instructional support. Overall, these findings advance our understanding of the psychological and instructional mechanics affecting human learning. These advances contribute to motivational theory development and to the development of models of adaptive and game-based learning. In addition, the findings of this dissertation advance our methodological understanding by indicating that a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of adaptive instructional support requires an examination of the strength and direction of difficulty adaptation and the use of repeated measurements of motivational outcomes during the learning activity. This work demonstrated that single-item in-game self-reported measurements could be used to accomplish this

User Experience Design and Evaluation of Persuasive Social Robot As Language Tutor At University : Design And Learning Experiences From Design Research

Human Robot Interaction (HRI) is a developing field where research and innovation are progressing. One domain where Human Robot Interaction has focused is in the educational sector. Various research has been conducted in education field to design social robots with appropriate design guidelines derived from user preferences, context, and technology to help students and teachers to foster their learning and teaching experience. Language learning has become popular in education due to students receiving opportunities to study and learn any interested subjects in any language in their preferred universities around the world. Thus, being the reason behind the research of using social robots in language learning and teaching in education field. To this context this thesis explored the design of language tutoring robot for students learning Finnish language at university. In language learning, motivation, the learning experience, context, and user preferences are important to be considered. This thesis focuses on the Finnish language learning students through language tutoring social robot at Tampere University. The design research methodology is used to design the persuasive language tutoring social robot teaching Finnish language to the international students at Tampere University. The design guidelines and the future language tutoring robot design with their benefits are formed using Design Research methodology. Elias Robot, a language tutoring application designed by Curious Technologies, Finnish EdTech company was used in the explorative user study. The user study involved Pepper, Social robot along with the Elias robot application using Mobile device technology. The user study was conducted in university, the students include three male participants and four female participants. The aim of the study was to gather the design requirements based on learning experiences from social robot tutor. Based on this study findings and the design research findings, the future language tutoring social robot was co-created through co design workshop. Based on the findings from Field study, user study, technology acceptance model findings, design research findings, student interviews, the persuasive social robot language tutor was designed. The findings revealed all the multi modalities are required for the efficient tutoring of persuasive social robots and the social robots persuade motivation with students to learn the language. The design implications were discussed, and the design of social robot tutor are created through design scenarios

Supporting learning in intelligent tutoring systems with motivational strategies.

Motivation and affect detection are prominent yet challenging areas of research in the field of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). Devising strategies to engage learners and motivate them to practice regularly are of great interest to researchers. In the learning and education domain, where students use ITSs regularly, motivating them to engage with the system effectively may lead to higher learning outcomes. Therefore, developing an ITS which provides a complete learning experience to students by catering to their cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and motivational needs is an ambitious yet promising area of research. This dissertation is the first step towards this goal in the context of SQL-Tutor, a mature ITS for tutoring SQL. In this research project, I have conducted a series of studies to detect and evaluate learners' affective states and employed various strategies for increasing motivation and engagement to improve learning from SQL-Tutor. Firstly, I established the reliability of iMotions to correctly identify learners' emotions and found that worked examples alleviated learners' frustration while solving problems with SQL-Tutor. Gamification is introduced as a motivational strategy to persuade learners to practice with the system. Gamification has emerged as a strong engagement and motivation strategy in learning environments for young learners. I evaluated the effects of gamified SQL-Tutor on undergraduate students and found that gamification indirectly improved learning by influencing learners’ time on task. It helped students by increasing their motivation which produce similar effects as intrinsically motivated students. Additionally, prior knowledge, gamification experience, and interest in the topic moderated the effects of gamification. Lastly, self-regulated learning support is presented as another strategy to affect learners’ internal motivation and skills. The support provided in the form of interventions improved students’ learning outcomes. Additionally, the learners' challenge-accepting behaviour, problem selection, goal setting, and self-reflection have improved with support without experiencing any negative emotions. This research project contributes to the latest trends of motivation and learning research in ITS

Conversational collection of grandparents' stories

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-81).The act of sharing stories, which often characterizes the interactions between grandparents and grandchildren, exerts a profound influence on both the child listener and the grandparent teller. Unfortunately, opportunities for such sharing are rare for the many extended families who are geographically separated, and the stories go untold. Simple methods such as tape recorders or memory books can be difficult to work with, as they do not provide the powerful feedback that an active and interested listener can give. Computer-based systems have the potential to model this feedback, but in order to be effective at evoking stories, the interface must move away from keyboard and monitor and must be grounded in an understanding of conversation. This work argues that an effective story-eliciting system for grandparents must be based on a model of conversational behavior, must provide a comfortable and story-evoking environment, and that the ideal interface is an autonomous animated character. I present GrandChair, a system which can elicit, record, index, and play back grandparents' stories within an interaction model based on face-to-face conversation, and couched in an environment designed to be comfortable and story-evoking. Tellers sit in a comfortable rocking chair and tell stories with the assistance of a conversational agent on a screen, who takes the form of a child, to help them tailor their stories to a child audience, and prompts them with stories, questions, and video clips from their previous interactions.by Jennifer Smith.S.M