Towards Ethical Design Features for Pedagogical Conversational Agents

Pedagogical Conversational Agents (PCAs) offer the potential to increase educational equity worldwide by making learning accessible to all as a service for good, often enabled by artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, there are ethical challenges to the design and use of PCAs that hinder the achievement of individual and social goals. However, in addition to a multitude of directives on the ethical design of information systems, concrete resulting design features for PCAs still fall short in scientific literature. Furthermore, a human-centered ethical discussion that integrates future users’ involvement in ethical PCA design is scarce to find. Based on a co-creation process embedded in Design Science Research with a total of 40 students, we derive requirements and concrete features for ethically responsible PCAs and reflect them along with the OECD principles for trustworthy AI. Initial conceptual prototypes visualize exemplary instantiations

Game-inspired Pedagogical Conversational Agents: A Systematic Literature Review

Pedagogical conversational agents (PCAs) are an innovative way to help learners improve their academic performance via intelligent dialog systems. However, PCAs have not yet reached their full potential. They often fail because users perceive conversations with them as not engaging. Enriching them with game-based approaches could contribute to mitigating this issue. One could enrich a PCA with game-based approaches by gamifying it to foster positive effects, such as fun and motivation, or by integrating it into a game-based learning (GBL) environment to promote effects such as social presence and enable individual learning support. We summarize PCAs that are combined with game-based approaches under the novel term “game-inspired PCAs”. We conducted a systematic literature review on this topic, as previous literature reviews on PCAs either have not combined the topics of PCAs and GBL or have done so to a limited extent only. We analyzed the literature regarding the existing design knowledge base, the game elements used, the thematic areas and target groups, the PCA roles and types, the extent of artificial intelligence (AI) usage, and opportunities for adaptation. We reduced the initial 3,034 records to 50 fully coded papers, from which we derived a morphological box and revealed current research streams and future research recommendations. Overall, our results show that the topic offers promising application potential but that scholars and practitioners have not yet considered it holistically. For instance, we found that researchers have rarely provided prescriptive design knowledge, have not sufficiently combined game elements, and have seldom used AI algorithms as well as intelligent possibilities of user adaptation in PCA development. Furthermore, researchers have scarcely considered certain target groups, thematic areas, and PCA roles. Consequently, our paper contributes to research and practice by addressing research gaps and structuring the existing knowledge base

Deriving Design Knowledge for eLearning Companions to Support International Students

International students often have difficulties in getting connected with other students (from their host country), or in fully understanding the lectures due to barriers such as interacting in a foreign language or adjusting to a new campus. eLearning Companions (eLCs) act as virtual friends, accompany students with dialog-based support for learning and provide individual guidance. We contribute to the lack of prescriptive design knowledge for that specific use case by deriving 16 design principles for eLCs and transferring them into an expository instantiation along the Design Science Research paradigm. We build upon 14 identified literature requirements and 15 condensed user requirements resulting from an empirical study with 76 Chinese-speaking exchange students at a German university. Our objective is to extend the knowledge base and support scientists and practitioners in eLC design for non-native students to initiate further research and discussion

DESIGN KNOWLEDGE FOR VIRTUAL LEARNING COMPANIONS

Conversational agents (CAs) are getting smarter thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, which opens the potential to use them in educational contexts to support (working) students. In addition, CAs are turning toward relationship-oriented virtual companions (e.g., Replika). Synthesizing these trends, we derive the virtual learning companion (VLC), which aims to support working students in their time management and motivation. In addition, we propose design knowledge, which was developed as part of a design science research project. We derive nine design principles, 28 meta-requirements, and 33 categories of design features based on interviews with students and experts, the results of an interdisciplinary workshop, and a user test. We aim to demonstrate how to design VLCs to unfold their potential for individual student support

Designing In-Store Navigation Systems in Physical Retail

Physical retail faces the challenge of remaining attractive to customers in the age of e-commerce. In-store navigation systems are one way to mitigate this issue. These software systems allow customers to be navigated through the retail store. We derive design requirements (DRs) for in-store navigation systems based on eight interviews with customers and employees of furniture stores. We illustrate the implementation of the DRs in a conceptual prototype designed with the platform “Hololink.” Initial evaluation results (n = 20) show that customers perceive such a solution for physical retail as mainly positive. We contribute to research and practice by showing how to design in-store navigation systems

Virtual Worlds in Education - A systematic Literature Review

Virtual worlds (VWs) are no novum in higher education but regain interest through COVID-19 restrictions, emerging technologies, and the metaverse hype. Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature review to gain the current status quo of research in higher and further education to identify the educational activities, research areas, learning environments, technologies towards the metaverse, subjects taught, and the current state of design knowledge. The initially found 587 records were systematically filtered to 89 fully coded articles. Based on our results, we define research gaps and derive research streams. Our results reveal a lack of research on social integration, course design, non-technical target groups, theoretical grounding and general design knowledge within the given context. The metaverse trend has reached educational research in the way that from 2016 onwards, new technologies are investigated selectively for educational purposes

Design Knowledge for Virtual Learning Companions from a Value-centered Perspective

The increasing popularity of conversational agents such as ChatGPT has sparked interest in their potential use in educational contexts but undermines the role of companionship in learning with these tools. Our study targets the design of virtual learning companions (VLCs), focusing on bonding relationships for collaborative learning while facilitating students’ time management and motivation. We draw upon design science research (DSR) to derive prescriptive design knowledge for VLCs as the core of our contribution. Through three DSR cycles, we conducted interviews with working students and experts, held interdisciplinary workshops with the target group, designed and evaluated two conceptual prototypes, and fully coded a VLC instantiation, which we tested with students in class. Our approach has yielded 9 design principles, 28 meta-requirements, and 33 design features centered around the value-in-interaction. These encompass Human-likeness and Dialogue Management, Proactive and Reactive Behavior, and Relationship Building on the Relationship Layer (DP1,3,4), Adaptation (DP2) on the Matching Layer, as well as Provision of Supportive Content, Fostering Learning Competencies, Motivational Environment, and Ethical Responsibility (DP5-8) on the Service Layer

Selbstreguliertes, digitales Lernen - Eine Taxonomie zu den Problemfeldern

Dieser Beitrag hat zum Ziel, zunächst literaturbasiert Lernprobleme im Kontext des SRLs (selbstreguliertes Lernen) zu ermitteln und darauf aufbauend in eine Taxonomie zu überführen, welche die Problemfelder dimensioniert. Die Taxonomie soll bei der Konzeption passender Lösungen für die Lernproblemfelder Orientierung geben, indem sie den Fokus auf die zu adressierenden Probleme lenkt, damit (technologiegestützte) Lernhilfen problemorientiert gestaltet werden. Dieser Aspekt fehlt in bestehenden Lern-Taxonomien, welche den Schwerpunkt eher auf die Lernziele und dahinter liegende kognitive Prozesse (Bloom, 1956) oder adaptive Variablen zur Lernerfolgssteigerung (Plass & Pawar, 2020) legen. [Aus: Einleitung

Why Do We Turn to Virtual Companions? A Text Mining Analysis of Replika Reviews

Many people globally experience the feeling of loneliness and struggle with its consequences. A modern way to deal with this loneliness and lack of companionship is to use empathetic and emotional conversational agents. Often referred to as virtual companions, these agents can engage in human-like conversations with their users and build relationships with them through modern artificial intelligence technologies. One established service of such virtual companions is Replika, which we investigate in this study to explore what users expect to gain from long-term interactions with virtual companions and what they tend to talk about with them. Using a text mining approach and 119,831 reviews of the Replika service, we analyze users\u27 sentiments, emotions, and topics. Our results show that users interact with virtual companions to cope with their loneliness and, especially, to address their mental well-being. Furthermore, Replika users have a joyful and beneficial experience during long-term interaction with such virtual companions