Face-to-Face Interaction with Pedagogical Agents, Twenty Years Later

Abstract

introduced and surveyed a new paradigm for interactive learning environments: animated pedagogical agents. The article argued for combining animated interface agent technologies with intelligent learning environments, yielding intelligent systems that can interact with learners in natural, human-like ways to achieve better learning outcomes. We outlined a variety of possible uses for pedagogical agents. But we offered only preliminary evidence that they improve learning, leaving that to future research and development. Twenty years have elapsed since work began on animated pedagogical agents. This article reexamines the concepts and predictions in the 2000 article in the context of the current state of the field. Some of the ideas in the paper have become well established and widely adopted, especially in game-based learning environments. Others are only now being realized, thanks to advances in immersive interfaces and robotics that enable rich face-to-face interaction between learners and agents. Research has confirmed that pedagogical agents can be beneficial, but not equally for all learning problems, applications, and learner populations. Although there is a growing body of research findings about pedagogical agents, many questions remain and much work remains to be done.

A gender matching effect in learning with pedagogical agents in an immersive virtual reality science simulation

“…Although the instructional effectiveness of onscreen pedagogical agents has been a topic of interest for the past 20 years (Cassell, 1Sullivan, Prevost, & Churchill, ; Dehn & van Mulken, ; Heidig & Clarebout, ; W. L. Johnson & Rickel, ; W. L. Johnson & Lester, ; Mayer & DaPra, ; R. Moreno et al, ; Schroeder & Adesope, ; Schroeder, Adesope, & Gilbert, ; Veletsianos & Russell, ; Wang, Li, Mayer, & Liu, ), an important remaining issue concerns how best to render the basic characteristics of the agent, such as gender, ethnicity, and age (Baylor & Kim, ; Hoogerheide, Loyens, & van Gog, ; Hoogerheide, van Mermeskerken, van Nassau, & van Gog, ; Kim & Baylor, ; R. Moreno & Flowerday, ; Ozogul, Johnson, Atkinson, & Reisslein, ; Rosenberg‐Kima, Plant, Doerr, & Baylor, ). Kim and Lim () found that learner gender was a significant factor in the learner's evaluations of a pedagogical agent with females holding more positive attitudes towards agents.…”

Scenarios in virtual learning environments for one-to-one communication skills training

“…According to Realdon, Zurloni, Confalonieri, Mortillaro, and Mantovani (2006), scripting different ad hoc perspectives is a fundamental prerequisite for a narrative structure in order to reproduce both the flexibility and regularity of communicative exchanges. In 'Face-to-Face Interaction with Pedagogical Agents, Twenty Years Later, ' Johnson and Lester (2016) evaluate the evolution of features of pedagogical agents over two decades. They present the possibility of interactive natural language dialogue by combining advances in natural language understanding and dialogue management.…”

Why not Robot Teachers: Artificial Intelligence for Addressing Teacher Shortage

“…Daphne Koller of Coursera holds a similar notion, 'people are social animals…they like to learn in groups and they like to learn from people', he declared and concluded that despite tremendous technology-aided achievement in education like that of Coursera, there is no surety that 'AI can do everything that a human college professor can do' (Johnson, 2016). He cited content creation, providing inspiration for learning, and attending to what he described as the 'really challenging questions' as things only human teachers will be able to do in line with the demands of human-human social interaction that are essential for learning.…”

“…Though studies have demonstrated that the agentic appearance and affective capabilities has implications for students' learning (Jensen, Jordine, and Wilson 2011;Johnson and Lester 2016), agentic size (in terms of physical robot) has not been the focus of studies. Robot size (miniature versus life-size) does not represent a major factor in our design due to cost, however, we have in mind to assess student expectations regarding this in future studies.…”