University of Piraeus,

Maria Virvou is a computer scientist with an interest in Intelligent User Interfaces, Use

Evaluating the Impact of Interface Agents in an Intelligent Tutoring Systems Authoring Tool

This paper describes the evaluation of a speech-driven cartoon agent that has been embodied in the interface of a Web-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) authoring tool. The agent is mainly used in the student interface of the ITSs that are produced by the authoring tool and represents either a student or an instructor. The agent was evaluated during an experiment in terms of the effect that it could have on students' interaction with the generated ITSs. The participants in the experiment were divided into three groups: one third of them worked with a version of the ITS in which the agent was supposed to be an instructor, another third worked with a version of the ITS in which the agent was acting as a costudent and the rest worked with an agent-less version. The results from this study seem to confirm the hypothesis that a pedagogical agent incorporated in an ITS can improve students' experience. On the other hand, the hypothesis that the presence of the agent significantly enhances learning was rejected based on our data. Comparing the two agent versions of the co-student and instructor, the most important finding was that students seem to feel more comfortable working with a virtual costudent than with a virtual instructor

An empirical study for the development of a Web-based authoring tool for Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Authoring tools for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have recently received a lot of attention from researchers in computer-based education. The reason for this is that they may provide environments where instructors may author their own ITSs in varying domains. In this way, painful constructions of ITSs, which may not be reusable, are avoided. However, the construction of an authoring tool is much more difficult than the construction of an ITS which is also considered difficult. Moreover, it is an area which is not yet well understood. In this paper we will report on an empirical study that we conducted in order to design and develop WEAR, an ITS authoring tool for Algebra-related domains. The study consisted of two phases where we investigated aspects concerning the attitude and behaviour of both students and instructors. This paper focuses on the parts of the study concerning the instructors. It also provides a brief description of the developed system's operation for the instructor in order to highlight how the resulting design specifications were put into practice