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Pedagogical Agents to Support Embodied, Discovery-Based Learning

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Book cover Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10498))

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Abstract

This paper presents a pedagogical agent designed to support students in an embodied, discovery-based learning environment. Discovery-based learning guides students through a set of activities designed to foster particular insights. In this case, the animated agent explains how to use the Mathematical Imagery Trainer for Proportionality, provides performance feedback, leads students to have different experiences and provides remedial instruction when required. It is a challenging task for agent technology as the amount of concrete feedback from the learner is very limited, here restricted to the location of two markers on the screen. A Dynamic Decision Network is used to automatically determine agent behavior, based on a deep understanding of the tutorial protocol. A pilot evaluation showed that all participants developed movement schemes supporting proto-proportional reasoning. They were able to provide verbal proto-proportional expressions for one of the taught strategies, but not the other.

The first two authors made equal contributions to technical aspects of the research.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Davis, USA

    Ahsan Abdullah, Mohammad Adil & Michael Neff

  2. University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Leah Rosenbaum, Miranda Clemmons, Mansi Shah & Dor Abrahamson

Authors
  1. Ahsan Abdullah
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  2. Mohammad Adil
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  3. Leah Rosenbaum
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  4. Miranda Clemmons
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  5. Mansi Shah
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  6. Dor Abrahamson
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  7. Michael Neff
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahsan Abdullah .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jonas Beskow

  2. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Christopher Peters

  3. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Ginevra Castellano

  4. Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

    Carol O'Sullivan

  5. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Iolanda Leite

  6. University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

    Stefan Kopp

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Abdullah, A. et al. (2017). Pedagogical Agents to Support Embodied, Discovery-Based Learning. In: Beskow, J., Peters, C., Castellano, G., O'Sullivan, C., Leite, I., Kopp, S. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10498. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67401-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67401-8_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67400-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67401-8

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