Animated pedagogical agents effects on enhancing student motivation and learning in a science inquiry learning environment

Abstract

This study focuses on the design and testing of a motivational animated pedagogical agent (APA) in an inquiry learning environment on kinematics. The aim of including the APA was to enhance students' perceptions of task relevance and selfefficacy. Given the under-representation of girls in science classrooms, special attention was given to designing an APA that would appeal to the female students. A review of the literature suggested that the best design solution would be an agent who was female, young, attractive, and ''cool''. An experiment compared three conditions: agent (image and voice), voice (no image), and control (no image and no voice). The research question was whether students' motivation and knowledge changed over time as they worked in the inquiry learning environment, and whether condition and gender affected such changes. Participants were 61 third-year students (mean age 14.7 years) from a secondary school. Gender was distributed evenly within and across conditions. A significant main effect of time on self-efficacy was found, with self-efficacy beliefs increasing significantly for both boys and girls. In addition, there was a significant interaction between time, condition, and gender for self-efficacy. About halfway during training, girls' self-efficacy beliefs significantly increased in both experimental conditions and decreased in the control condition. For boys the opposite pattern was found. Girls also gave higher appraisals for the agent. Students in all three conditions realized significant knowledge gains, which did not differ by gender. The discussion critically considers the need for, and design of motivational scaffolding in inquiry learning environments.

Tool Use in Computer-Based Learning Environments: Adopting and Extending the Technology Acceptance Model

“…Offering this instructional intervention to learners may not only result in more optimal tool use [25,27] but also moderate perceptions [27]. Other studies have also found that advice moderates self-efficacy beliefs in learners [28] and affects quality of tool use positively which in turn influence performance [24]. One could investigate the effect of an explanation or no explanation of the tool functionality on self-efficacy perceptions, tool use (quantity and quality), and performance.…”

Promoción de habilidades personales para la vida a través de la implementación de cuatro enfoques instruccionales en un MOOC

“…It must also be kept in mind that this was the first MOOC to be delivered in Spanish that focused on personal competencies such as motivation (Lorenz et al, 2015;Van der Meij, Van der Meij, & Harmsen, 2015), self-efficacy, metacognition (Reid, Morrison, & Bol, 2017), self-esteem, written communication and emotional competencies, to be useful for the general population and to draw on a sample made up of children, adolescents, youths and adults.…”

Persisting Issues in Pedagogical Agent Research

“…Manipulating the agent’s speech patterns may be one way to further leverage the beneficial aspects of social communication. For instance, researchers have used motivational theory to guide how the agent communicates with the learner (Van der Meij, Van der Meij, & Harmsen, 2015). It is also plausible that agents that demonstrate or model tasks may be effective for learning (Moreno, 2005).…”