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Can Virtual Agents Scale Up Mentoring?: Insights from College Students’ Experiences Using the CareerFair.ai Platform at an American Hispanic-Serving Institution

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Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13916))

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Abstract

Mentoring promotes underserved students’ persistence in STEM but is difficult to scale up. Conversational virtual agents can help address this problem by conveying a mentor’s experiences to larger audiences. The present study examined college students’ \((N = 138)\) utilization of CareerFair.ai, an online platform featuring virtual agent-mentors that were self-recorded by sixteen real-life mentors and built using principles from the earlier MentorPal framework. Participants completed a single-session study which included 30 min of active interaction with CareerFair.ai, sandwiched between pre-test and post-test surveys. Students’ user experience and learning gains were examined, both for the overall sample and with a lens of diversity and equity across different, potentially underserved demographic groups. Findings included positive pre/post changes in intent to pursue STEM coursework and high user acceptance ratings (e.g., expected benefit, ease of use), with under-represented minority (URM) students giving significantly higher ratings on average than non-URM students. Self-reported learning gains of interest, actual content viewed on the CareerFair.ai platform, and actual learning gains were associated with one another, suggesting that the platform may be a useful resource in meeting a wide range of career exploration needs. Overall, the CareerFair.ai platform shows promise in scaling up aspects of mentoring to serve the needs of diverse groups of college students.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Defense Education Program (NDEP) for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education, Outreach, and Workforce Initiative Programs under Grant No. HQ0034-20-S-FO01. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Defense nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. We thank the CareerFair.ai project mentors, research assistants, and study participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, 92831, USA

    Yuko Okado & Angelica Aguirre

  2. University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, Playa Vista, CA, 90094, USA

    Benjamin D. Nye & William Swartout

Authors
  1. Yuko Okado
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  2. Benjamin D. Nye
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  3. Angelica Aguirre
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  4. William Swartout
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuko Okado .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Ning Wang

  2. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Genaro Rebolledo-Mendez

  3. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Noboru Matsuda

  4. Despacho 3.01, UNED-Grupo de Investigación aDeNu, Madrid, Spain

    Olga C. Santos

  5. University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Vania Dimitrova

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Okado, Y., Nye, B.D., Aguirre, A., Swartout, W. (2023). Can Virtual Agents Scale Up Mentoring?: Insights from College Students’ Experiences Using the CareerFair.ai Platform at an American Hispanic-Serving Institution. In: Wang, N., Rebolledo-Mendez, G., Matsuda, N., Santos, O.C., Dimitrova, V. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13916. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36272-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36272-9_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-36271-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-36272-9

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