Studying with the Help of Digital Tutors: Design Aspects of Conversational Agents that Influence the Learning Process

Conversational agents such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa are becoming more and more prevalent. Almost every smart device comes equipped with such an agent. While on the one hand they can make menial everyday tasks a lot easier for people, there are also more sophisticated use cases in which conversational agents can be helpful. One of these use cases is tutoring in higher education. Several systems to support both formal and informal learning have been developed. There have been many studies about single characteristics of pedagogical conversational agents and how these influence learning outcomes. But what is still missing, is an overview and guideline for atomic design decisions that need to be taken into account when creating such a system. Based on a review of articles on pedagogical conversational agents, this paper provides an extension of existing classifications of characteristics as to include more fine-grained design aspects

Supportive technologies for group discussion in MOOCs

A key hurdle that prevents MOOCs from reaching their transformative potential in terms of making valuable learning experiences available to the masses is providing support for students to make use of the resources they can provide for each other. This paper lays the foundation for meeting this challenge by beginning with a case study and computational modeling of social interaction data. The analysis yields new knowledge that informs design and development of novel, real-time support for building healthy learning communities that foster a high level of engagement and learning. We conclude by suggesting specific areas for potential impact of new technology

Reasoning, argumentative interaction and idea life cycles during group product ideation in higher education

Abstract. This study presents the analysis of the use of argument in group ideation process in higher education settings. The need for such analysis is dictated by the fact that students in higher education are one step away from joining wider professional communities, where the ability to engage in joint brainstorming and evaluating new products is in high demand. The study data consists of transcripts of ideation discussions of two groups of master’s degree students. The task for both groups was to imagine and formulate a future AI-based teaching/learning assistant, prepare a short verbal presentation of the product, and present it to the whole class. The analysis is arranged in three steps. First, frequency and quality of grounded claims is evaluated using Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern. Then, the type of talk is determined using the indicators of exploratory, cumulative and disputational talk (Mercer, 1996), the interplay between types of talk is examined. Finally, idea life cycles and reasoning behind idea demotion is investigated. The results indicate that 1) arguments are provided rarely, but when provided, most of them (2/3) are complete; 2) exploratory talk manifests mostly in elaborations on peers’ ideas, whereas reasoning (justifications) to own ideas and critical evaluation is less frequent; these factors characterise the discussions more as co-constructive interaction rather than exploratory talk; 3) dominance of elaborative comments on an idea leads to inclusion the idea in group solution; reasoning for idea demotion varies remarkably between the two groups (56% vs. 80%). These outcomes indicate that students might benefit from enhancing their reasoning to be ready for workplace ideation in groups. From task design view, clear product metrics should be set, and a line drawn between brainstorming and evaluation phase, to prevent unreasoned idea demoting in brainstorming and stimulate questioning and reasoning in evaluation

Microcultures in the meso level of higher education organisations – the Commons, the Club, the Market and the Square

Higher education (HE) is and has been a growing concern for various stakeholders for a considerable time. Sometimes contradictory attempts to reform HE have increased the pressure on academic teachers and contributed to an experience of demand overload. This research conceptualises HE organisations so that dynamics related to change and stability become understandable. A socio-cultural perspective on organisations is applied, where interactions between academic teachers form the core of the analysis. It is assumed that through these interactions, academic teachers construct and maintain what they hold to be true in teaching and learning. The research is conducted in a research-intensive institution using ethnographically inspired methods, such as observations, interviews and narratives. Results maintain that more or less distinct collegial contexts form the organisational meso level, and that such microcultures in turn influence the individual academics. The influence is reciprocal; individuals as knowledgeable agents can influence the existing norms in the microculture, but due to the complexity in the day-to-day situations they mostly do not. Microcultures shape collegial interactions and thereby influence matters like belonging, identities, and status. It is argued that these microcultures, which are loosely coupled to each other, provide opportunities for professional sophistication as well as for defensive withdrawal from the organisational context surrounding them. The collegial interaction enables microcultures to be active as agents (partly independent organisational units) inside organisations. For example, academically strong microcultures themselves decide whether or not to be influenced by external pressures, whether these are policies formulated by senior management in the organisation to which they belong, or by other policymakers. Microcultures are linked to each other through weak ties, that is, interactions of lower intensity and frequency than the interactions inside the microcultures. It is hypothesised that these weak ties are decisive for organisational learning, coordination, and governance, especially in times of external pressure. The results presented in this thesis as well as in the literature suggest that weak ties are essential for understanding how well an organisation is functioning. Microcultures are signified by norms, traditions and recurrent practices that can vary considerably. This variation allows microcultures to adapt to the specifics of their respective contexts and thereby increase their functionality. It is shown that microcultures display similar design principles. The appearances, functions and applications of these design principles are keys for future exploration of microcultures in higher education organisations. Microcultures differ from each other along two dimensions that are linked to variations in the internal collegial interaction. First, the degree to which the colleagues who share the microculture consider each other to be significant. Second, the degree to which members experience a shared responsibility for an educational practice. The analysis resulted in four types of microcultures: the commons, the market, the club, and the square. These are presented as heuristics that are applicable to future empirical exploration of higher education organisations. Overall, it is essential to focus on the meso level of higher education organisations and the patterns of collegial interaction that result in various microcultures. This is, in turn, essential for understanding how higher education organisations function in times of increased pressure from various stakeholders

Potentials of Chatbot Technologies for Higher Education: A Systematic Review

Chatbots are used in different areas such as customer service, healthcare and education. The potential for improving outcomes and processes in education is high but differs for different types of chatbots. As universities want to provide excellent teaching, it is important to find the chatbot technologies with the greatest possible benefit. This paper presents a systematic review of chatbot technologies in five application areas. For each application area, the ten most cited publications are analysed and a possible categorisation scheme for chatbot technologies is derived. Furthermore, it is investigated which chatbot technology types are used and their suitability for higher education is analysed. The results show that chatbots can be categorised using five categories derived from the 50 publications. A total of 14 different types of chatbot technologies are found in the five areas. Nine of them are suitable for use in higher education

Towards a Virtual Collaborator in Online Collaboration from an Organizations’ Perspective

In this empiric study, we present the specifications of virtual collaboration in times of the Covid-19 pandemic in an organization that worked mostly co-located beforehand, and requirements for a virtual collaborator (VC) resulting from those specifications. Related work shows that a VCs can support virtual teams in achieving their goals and promote creative work. We extend this with insights from practice by observing creative and collaborative workshops in the automotive industry and conducting interviews with facilitators and participants of these workshops. Subsequently, we identify the challenges that participants face in virtual collaboration, and derive design guidelines for a VC to address them. Main problems arise due to the virtual interaction lacking nonverbal communication and in the preparation phase that requires more planning and effort. A VC could help by influencing group cohesion and build networks between the participants, influencing the virtual working environment as well as contributing to the contents

The Effects of Academically Productive Talk in Group Discourse in a Virtual Internship for Engineering

Skills associated with collaborative problem solving (CPS), especially in STEM-related disciplines, are increasingly regarded as essential for success in work and life. In the last decade, simulation-based games have emerged as rich environments for the situated learning of such skills, and are instrumental in the study of CPS because they provide rich data for detailed analysis of discourse and social interaction. One type of social interaction, Academically Productive Talk (APT), has been found to support collaborative activity, encourage knowledge integration, and promote academic gains for individuals. However, little is known about the relationship between APT and how groups develop complex STEM thinking. Additionally, despite evidence that students’ attitudes affect social interaction during collaborative activity, little is known about how collaborative social interaction may affect students’ attitudes. The primary goals of this study were to examine CPS discourse in order to: 1) investigate the relationship between the qualities and characteristics of how groups talk and what groups talk about; and 2) understand whether how groups talk effects a change in students’ attitudes. To meet these aims, this study paired conversation analysis with an innovative analytical methodology, Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA), to study groups’ endogenous use of APT and its relationship with substantive qualities of group discourse in the virtual simulation of professional practice in engineering, Nephrotex. This study presents empirical evidence that, (1) specific APT-style contributions were effective for introducing critical, domain-specific evidence into student discourse, and (2) more use of APT in group discourse resulted in better knowledge integration of human-centered design constraints (i.e., their client’s needs; their consultants’ interests) and data analysis. These findings varied in terms of how, when, and what type of, integration occurred. No evidence was found to suggest that students’ participation in groups that engage in more APT affects a positive change in their attitudes. A better understanding of the effects of APT in a simulation-based game environment can be used to inform the ongoing research and development of technologies capable of shaping and observing discourse as it occurs in virtual environments for learning, and that support students’ development of CPS skills

Interacting with educational chatbots: A systematic review

Chatbots hold the promise of revolutionizing education by engaging learners, personalizing learning activities, supporting educators, and developing deep insight into learners’ behavior. However, there is a lack of studies that analyze the recent evidence-based chatbot-learner interaction design techniques applied in education. This study presents a systematic review of 36 papers to understand, compare, and reflect on recent attempts to utilize chatbots in education using seven dimensions: educational field, platform, design principles, the role of chatbots, interaction styles, evidence, and limitations. The results show that the chatbots were mainly designed on a web platform to teach computer science, language, general education, and a few other fields such as engineering and mathematics. Further, more than half of the chatbots were used as teaching agents, while more than a third were peer agents. Most of the chatbots used a predetermined conversational path, and more than a quarter utilized a personalized learning approach that catered to students’ learning needs, while other chatbots used experiential and collaborative learning besides other design principles. Moreover, more than a third of the chatbots were evaluated with experiments, and the results primarily point to improved learning and subjective satisfaction. Challenges and limitations include inadequate or insufficient dataset training and a lack of reliance on usability heuristics. Future studies should explore the effect of chatbot personality and localization on subjective satisfaction and learning effectiveness