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Virtual Agents in the Classroom: Experience Fielding a Co-presenter Agent in University Courses

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Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10011))

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Abstract

The design of a conversational virtual agent that assists professors and students in giving in-class oral presentations is described, along with preliminary evaluation results. The life-sized agent is integrated with PowerPoint presentation software and can deliver presentations in conjunction with a human presenter using appropriate verbal and nonverbal behavior. Results from evaluation studies in two courses—business and professional speaking, and computer science research methods—indicate that the agent is widely accepted in the classroom by students, and can serve to increase engagement in presentations given both by professors and students.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under award IIS-1514490. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Timothy Bickmore, Ha Trinh, Michael Hoppmann & Reza Asadi

Authors
  1. Timothy Bickmore
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  2. Ha Trinh
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  3. Michael Hoppmann
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  4. Reza Asadi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Timothy Bickmore .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

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

    David Traum

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    William Swartout

  3. US Army Research Laboratory, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Peter Khooshabeh

  4. Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Stefan Kopp

  5. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Stefan Scherer

  6. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Anton Leuski

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Bickmore, T., Trinh, H., Hoppmann, M., Asadi, R. (2016). Virtual Agents in the Classroom: Experience Fielding a Co-presenter Agent in University Courses. In: Traum, D., Swartout, W., Khooshabeh, P., Kopp, S., Scherer, S., Leuski, A. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10011. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47664-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47665-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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