Yanghee Kim

Pedagogical agents as learning companions: the impact of agent emotion and gender

The potential of emotional interaction between human and computer has recently interested researchers in human–computer interaction. The instructional impact of this interaction in learning environments has not been established, however. This study examined the impact of emotion and gender of a pedagogical agent as a learning companion (PAL) on social judgements, interest, self-efficacy, and learning. Two experiments investigated separately the effects of a PAL’s emotional expression and empathetic response. Experiment 1 focused on emotional expression (positive vs. negative vs. neutral) and gender (male vs. female) with a sample of 142 male and female college students in a computer literacy course. Experiment 2 investigated the impact of empathetic response (responsive vs. non-responsive) and gender with 56 pre-service teachers. Overall, the results yielded main and interaction effects of PAL emotion and gender on the dependent variables. In particular, the PAL’s empathetic response had a positive impact on learner interest and self-efficacy; PAL gender had a positive impact on recall. The findings imply that the emotion and the gender of the digital learning companion could be utilized to optimize college students’ motivation and learning.

Research-Based Design of Pedagogical Agent Roles: a Review, Progress, and Recommendations

In this paper we review the contribution of our original work titled “Simulating Instructional Roles Through Pedagogical Agents” published in the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Education (Baylor and Kim in Computers and Human Behavior, 25(2), 450–457, 2005). Our original work operationalized three instructional roles as simulated through pedagogical agents, and demonstrated the effectiveness of these agent roles on learning and motivation. Since the publication of our work, pedagogical agent research has expanded its scope from the provision of intelligent guidance to a broad interest in agents’ social and affective support for learners. We discuss current progress in pedagogical agent roles and capabilities, and speculate about the future of agent role design. We expect that optimizing the roles of artificial beings including on-screen agents and robots will continue to interest the educational technology community as these technologies continue to evolve.

Effects of learner–instructor relationship-building strategies in online video instruction

Although research has demonstrated that an increased rapport between instructors and learners can positively relate with increased learning gains, perhaps mediated by the positive attitudes toward the course and self-efficacy beliefs in the coursework, little has been done to test what instructional strategies might increase this rapport in online video-based instruction. This study compared online video-based instruction that made use of relationship-building strategies with online video-based instruction that did not use those strategies. The two instructions were identical in every other way. The results show that the attitudes of the college students were positively affected by the relationship building strategies in a statistically significant way (p = .025) and that learning gains were also positively affected at a very near-significant level (p = .052). The implications of the findings are discussed.

Pedagogical and Technological Augmentation of Mobile Learning for Young Children Interactive Learning Environments.

ABSTRACT The ubiquity and educational potential of mobile applications are well acknowledged. This paper proposes six theory-based, pedagogical strategies to guide interaction design of mobile apps for young children. Also, to augment the capabilities of mobile devices, we used a humanoid robot integrated with a smartphone and developed an English-learning app that applied the design strategies to this environment. Our observations of childrens one-on-one use support the promise of the strategies and the combined use of robots and mobile devices to be a viable option to help optimize mobile learning.

Designing for Young Children: Learning, Practice, and Decisions

This paper presents a vignette of our development of a robot-based app sponsored by the corporation producing the robot. The discussion in this paper begins with the affordances of humanoid robots that enable transformative pedagogical approaches to address children’s needs. Next, we present our design case, where we develop a humanoid robot-based English-learning curriculum for young children to learn English as a second language. This case highlights a multifaceted app development process that involves synergistic, multidisciplinary teamwork and design enhancement through repeated observations of child/robot interactions. We present a few snapshots from the design case to illustrate the teamwork and design enhancement. From our observations in repeated user-testing, the robot app seems to induce independent navigation, sustained attention and engagement, and rich learning experiences for children. The design challenges and the way we address them may be useful for others developing similar interventions for young children.

Designing an Engaging & Affable Robot (DEAR)

1. DEAR Goals Recent advances in robotics technology offer many new opportunities to innovate how children learn. These opportunities can be actualized and substantiated only through rigorous, pedagogically guided designs of collaborative tasks and interactions with the robot. Acknowledging the constant need for learning a second language worldwide, this project explored how we could make best use of the unique affordances of an embodied robot in order to support young children’s language learning experiences while interacting with the robot. Our design goal was to create child/robot interactions that were engaging, developmentally appropriate, and thereby sustaining. We used a mobile phone-based robot that helped achieve the goals at an affordable range. In this demonstration, we will present our designs, which were grounded in well-known theories on child development and second language acquisition, and how the robot’s advanced features supported producing engaging and creative solutions.

Designing Tools that Care: The Affective Qualities of Virtual Peers, Robots, and Videos

Abstract This chapter is concerned with the use of advanced learning technologies in order to facilitate a learner’s positive affect and, thereby, increase engagement and learning. The chapter introduces three tools that we have used to promote positive affect in groups of learners, ranging from preschoolers to college students: virtual peers (animated, on-screen characters), humanoid robots, and online videos. The chapter starts with a brief discussion of the integral relationship between affect and cognition to emphasize the importance of learner affect as a catalyst for successful learning. The following sections discuss how each of the three technologies has been used to support positive affect in students who face various challenges in their learning. The chapter ends with concluding thoughts and recommendations for future research.