Enali: A Research and Design Framework for Virtual Characters and Pedagogical Agents

Abstract

Conflicts occur when learners interact with pedagogical agents and virtual characters. Such conflicts—arising from technological limitations, psychosocial perceptions, and pedagogical inadequacies—hinder communication and interaction between virtual characters and learners, and impede successful engagement with learning tasks and experiences. To enhance communication and interaction between virtual characters and learners, we propose a three-tier framework of 15 research-based guidelines. This framework enables theorists, researchers, and designers to view virtual characters with a holistic lens, informing the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of virtual characters in electronic learning contexts.

¿Qué esperan los maestros de los Agentes Conversacionales Pedagógicos?

“…Debido a la importancia que está adquiriendo la tecnología en la educación, la posibilidad de integrar agentes en entornos de aprendizaje también está aumentando y ganando en importancia (Veletsianos, et al, 2009). En este sentido, son importantes los Agentes Conversacionales Pedagógicos (ACP), que se pueden definir como sistemas interactivos que permiten a los estudiantes repasar de una forma entretenida y amigable (Johnson, et al, 2000).…”

“…Sirva como ejemplo alguno de los problemas, aún no resueltos, que conlleva la interacción con agentes o la incomprensión del diálogo. Esto genera sentimientos negativos en el estudiante, dificulta la comunicación e interacción y, en último lugar, disminuye la consecución de las tareas de aprendizaje (Veletsianos, et al, 2009). En ello radica la importancia del diseño, así como de todos los avances que se pueda alcanzar en ese sentido, tanto en la estandarización como el establecimiento de metodologías de diseño.…”

Pre-MEGa: A Proposed Framework for the Design and Evaluation of Preschoolers’ Mobile Educational Games

“…Appropriate to receivers abilities, experiences and frame of reference [13] Verbal matching non-verbal message [13] Clearly owned by agent [13] Complete and specific [13] Describe feelings by name, action or figure of speech [13] Characteristics Attractive [12,13] Free of gender or ethnic bias [2,12] Establishes credibility and trustworthiness [13] Establishes a role and relationship to user/task [13] Polite and positive [13] Expressive [13] Context-appropriate visual representation [13] Over-delivers and undersells [12] …”

Extending an Educational Math Game with a Pedagogical Conversational Agent: Facing Design Challenges

“…Whereas there is no theoretical framework to answer this question in detail, there are sufficient research-based and empirical findings not to leave all new design decisions to "designer's intuition" or other personal bias. The most comprehensive, recent and practical set of guidelines we have found to meet our present design needs, is the Enhancing Agent-Learner Interaction (EnALI) framework [41].…”

“…User interaction refers to the ways the agent and the student cooperate and relate to each other; message refers to the verbal information the agent sends to the student, and agent characteristics focuses on those variables that inherently define the agent. For the complete set of references to the empirical findings on which particular guidelines are based, we refer to the original EnALI article by Veletsianos, Miller and Doering [41]. An overview of the actual design guidelines is provided in Table 1.…”