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Impact of Pedagogical Agents’ Conversational Formality on Learning and Engagement

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Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10331))

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Abstract

This study investigated the impact of pedagogical agents’ conversational formality on learning and engagement in a trialog-based intelligent tutoring system (ITS). Participants (N = 167) were randomly assigned into one of three conditions to learn summarization strategies with the conversational agents: (1) a formal condition in which both the teacher agent and the student agent spoke with a formal language style, (2) an informal condition in which both agents spoke informally, and (3) a mixed condition in which the teacher agent spoke formally, whereas the student agent spoke informally. Result showed that the agents’ informal discourse yielded higher performance, but elicited higher report of text difficulty and mind wandering. This discourse also caused longer response time and lower arousal. The implications are discussed.

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Acknowledgement

This work was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (Grant No. R305C120001). Any opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of these funding agencies, cooperating institutions, or other individuals.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 08904, USA

    Haiying Li

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, 38152, USA

    Art Graesser

Authors
  1. Haiying Li
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  2. Art Graesser
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Correspondence to Haiying Li .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Human-Centered Multimedia, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

    Elisabeth André

  2. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Ryan Baker

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    Xiangen Hu

  4. Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City, Philippines

    Ma. Mercedes T. Rodrigo

  5. University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Benedict du Boulay

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Li, H., Graesser, A. (2017). Impact of Pedagogical Agents’ Conversational Formality on Learning and Engagement. In: André, E., Baker, R., Hu, X., Rodrigo, M., du Boulay, B. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Education. AIED 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10331. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61425-0_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61425-0_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61424-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61425-0

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