moyo
TRANSCRIPT
Effective Tutoring with Affective Embodied Conversational Agents
Sharon Moyo [email protected]
Supervisors Dr Paul Piwek
Dr Neil Smith Department/Institute Computing Status Part‐time Probation viva After Starting date Oct 2007 This natural language generation project aims to investigate the impact of affect expression using embodied conversational agents (ECAs) in computer‐based learning environments. Based on the idea that there is a link between emotions and learning, we are developing an affect expression strategy. We will implement the strategy within a tutoring system in two domains: Information Technology (IT) and Business Studies. Current research has not firmly established the impact of affect expression strategies within tutorial feedback which supports learners in computer‐based learning environments [1]. Our approach is to provide affective support through empathy. Empathy is described as expressing emotion that is based on another’s situation (target) and not merely one’s own [2]. An individual can show: parallel empathy that mirrors the target’s emotion; or reactive empathy that might be different to the target’s emotion [2]. The empathic tutor interventions will be designed to support positive emotions [3] and reduce negative learner emotions [4] using a range of verbal and non‐verbal (or multimodal) interventions. These interventions will be combined with corrective and meta‐cognitive feedback [5] and presented to users as a hint or summary. We will conduct a series of studies. Initially, we intend to develop implement and evaluate an algorithm that generates multimodal empathic behaviours using an ECA. The experiment conditions will include multimodal channels of communication: speech vs. speech and facial expression vs. speech and gesture vs. speech, facial expression and gesture. We hypothesize that participants will identify the ECA’s expression most accurately in the condition using three channels to generate affective expressions in comparison to the other conditions.
2010 CRC PhD Student Conference
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Additionally we aim to evaluate when and how parallel or reactive empathy can be used to best effect in learning environments. Subsequently, we will integrate the algorithm into a web‐based tutoring environment and conduct an evaluation in the domain of Business Studies. Finally, in the main study we will evaluate the empathic tutoring system in a classroom setting over several weeks in the domain of Information Technology (IT). We intend to contribute to current research by describing how an ECA can effectively express multimodal [6] empathic behaviour within computer‐based learning. More specifically, we aim to create a framework to model parallel and reactive empathy and the learning contexts where they can be used in a quiz‐based web environment. We intend to validate these results through evaluations across two domains: Information Technology and Business demonstrating that the framework can be applied to other quiz‐based learning environments. References: 1. Arroyo, I., et al. Designing Affective Support to Foster Learning, Motivation
and Attribution. in AIED 2009. 2009. Brighton, UK: IOS.
2. Davis, M., Empathy: A Social Psychological Approach. 1994, Madison, WI: Brown and Benchmark.
3. Bickmore, T. and D. Schulman, Practical approaches to comforting users with relational agents, in CHI '07 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. 2007, ACM: San Jose, CA, USA.
4. Burleson, W., Affective learning companions: Strategies for empathetic agents with real‐time multimodal affective sensing to foster meta‐cognitive and meta‐affective approaches to learning, motivation, and perseverance. . 2006, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cambridge, MA.
5. Tan, J. and G. Biswas. The Role of Feedback in Preparation for Future Learning: A Case Study in Learning by Teaching Environments. in ITS 2006. 2006: Springer‐Verlag.
6. Cassell, J., et al. Animated Conversation: Rule‐Based Generation of Facial Expression, Gesture and Spoken Intonation for Multiple Conversational Agents. . in Siggraph 94, ACM SIGGRAPH. 1994: Addison Wesley.
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