Novice programmers often find learning programming difficult. They suffer from various misconceptions and difficulties in understanding the subject. The overall experience with programming can be negative for many students. They may feel isolated in the programming environment and think that programming is difficult for them. Many schools use automated grading tools to process student work and provide them with early feedback. Web-CAT, an open-source software system that is widely used by many universities, is an example of such an automated grading tool. We have developed a Virtual Teaching Assistant for Web-CAT, called Maria, who can support the students to help alleviate some of the negative emotions towards programming. We have used an animated pedagogical agent as the virtual assistant as certain characteristics of the agent can help with the students' perception about the virtual teaching assistant. Often, students have a fixed mindset about programming. But it is easy to master programming with practice. To promote a growth mindset, Maria also provides feedback recognizing the effort of the student in addition to the performance-oriented feedback of the students' programs. Maria can also provide motivating or encouraging comments to continue working on the assignment to get a good score. Maria can also provide information about the various errors displayed in student feedback. / Master of Science / Beginners often find learning computer programming difficult. They may suffer from various misconceptions and difficulties in understanding the subject. Also, there can be a negative experience surrounding programming for many students. They may feel isolated in the programming environment and think that programming is difficult for them. Many schools use automated software tools to grade student programs and provide them with early feedback. Web-CAT, a software system that is widely used by many universities, is an example of such an automated grading tool. We have developed a Virtual Teaching Assistant to reside within Web-CAT, called Maria, who can support the students to help alleviate some of the negative emotions towards programming. We have used an animated human-like character, known as pedagogical agent, for Maria as it is widely use in pedagogy to help students. Often, students think programming is an innate skill and it is difficult to acquire. But it is easy to master programming with practice. To encourage students to continue working, Maria also provides feedback recognizing the effort that the student has put in towards completing the programming assignment or project. In certain cases, Maria can also provide motivating or encouraging comments to the students to help them continue working on the assignment. Maria can also provide explanation about the various programming errors that students encounter during their submission to Web-CAT.

Empirical research provides evidence of strong interaction between cognitive and affective processes in the human mind. Education research proposes a model of constructive learning that relates cognitive and affective processes in an evolving cycle of affective states. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are capable of providing comprehensive cognitive support. Affective support in ITSs, however, is lagging behind; the in-depth exploration of cognitive and affective processes in ITSs is yet to be seen. Our research focuses on the integration of affective support in an ITS enhanced with an affective pedagogical agent. In our work we adopt the dimensional (versus categorical) view of emotions for modelling affective states of the agent and the ITSs users. In two stages we develop and evaluate an affective pedagogical agent. The affective response of the first agent version is based on the appraisal of the interaction state; this agent's affective response is displayed as affective facial expressions. The pilot study at the end of the first stage of the project confirms the viability of our approach which combines the dimensional view of emotions with the appraisal of interaction state. In the second stage of the project we develop a facial feature tracking application for real-time emotion recognition in a video-stream. Affective awareness of the second version of the agent is based on the output from the facial feature tracking application and the appraisal of the interaction state. This agent's response takes the form of affectoriented messages designed to interrupt the state of negative flow. The evaluation of the affect-aware agent against an unemotional affect-unaware agent provides positive results, thus confirming the superiority of the affect-aware agent. Although the uptake of the agent was not unanimous, the agent established and maintained good rapport with the users in a role of a caring tutor. The results of the pilot study and the final evaluation validate our choices in the design of affective interaction. In both experiments, the participants appreciated the addition of audible feedback messages, describing it as an enhancement which helped them save time and maintain their focus. Finally, we offer directions for future research on affective support which can be conducted within the framework developed in the course of this project.

Esta tese apresenta uma pesquisa direcionada para a análise das relações dialógicas produzidas em interações de crianças com o agente pedagógico afetivo Maga Vitta no jogo digital Città. A motivação para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho é a possibilidade de tornar mais natural e mais contextualizada a relação entre o agente pedagógico afetivo e as crianças em sala de aula, verificando, assim, no que este estudo pode contribuir para criar mecanismos de diálogos entre o agente e o estudante voltados para jogos digitais na educação, no contexto escolar das crianças. Também, está direcionada para as pesquisas comprometidas com o jogo digital Città, visando ao desenvolvimento e melhorias do ambiente educacional, considerando que o mesmo está em constante evolução. A partir das interações das crianças com este jogo digital, busca-se resolver o problema de pesquisa que está focado em verificar como são essas relações dialógicas das crianças com o agente pedagógico afetivo do jogo. Para fins de validação da pesquisa foi implementado o agente, Maga Vitta, que foi pensado juntamente com o grupo de pesquisa do projeto CIVITAS, vinculado ao LELIC – Laboratório de Estudos em Linguagem, Interação e Cognição da UFRGS da Faculdade de Educação da UFRGS, para fazer o controle ecológico da cidade digital construída por crianças no jogo Città. A ideia é fazer com que a criança possa refletir sobre suas ações no ambiente do jogo, operando com os conhecimentos que está construindo sobre uma cidade sustentável e cooperativa, considerando aspectos ecológicos e ambientais de uma cidade que se quer colocar em equilíbrio. A população-alvo são crianças dos 4º e 5º anos do Ensino Fundamental, que fazem parte do projeto CIVITAS através do desenvolvimento de cidade virtuais utilizando materiais alternativos. Os resultados dos experimentos demonstraram que a análise das relações dialógicas sobre as interações das crianças e a análise desses dados envolvendo questões ligadas aos conceitos de Bakhtin, tais como produção de sentidos, enunciados e relações dialógicas, trazem contribuições significativas para a área de pesquisa. / The present thesis presents a research focused to the analysis of dialogical relationships produced in interactions of children with the affective pedagogical agent Maga Vitta in the digital game Città. The motivation for the development of this work is the possibility of making the relationship between the agent and the kids in the classroom more natural and more contextualized, checking in what manner this study can contribute to create dialogue mechanisms between the agent and the student aiming digital games in education, in the children’s school context. The present work is also related to the researches committed to the digital game Città, aiming the development and improvement of the educational environment, once it is constantly evolving. From the interaction of children with this digital game, we aim to solve the problem of research that is focused on verifying how these dialogical relationships of children with affective pedagogical agent occur in the game. For validation purposes of research it was implemented the agent, Maga Vitta, which was thought together with the research group of the CIVITAS project, linked to the laboratory of Studies on language, interaction and Cognition of UFRGS, of Education College at the UFRGS, to do the ecological control of the digital city built by children in the game Città. The idea is to make the children able to reflect on their actions in the game environment, operating with the knowledge that they are building on a sustainable and cooperative town, considering ecological and environmental aspects of a city that we wants to put in balance. The target population is children attending to 4th and 5th grades of elementary school, who make part of the CIVITAS project through the development of virtual cities using alternative materials. The results of the experiments have shown that the analysis of dialogic relations on children's interactions and the analysis of data involving issues related to the concepts of Bakhtin, such as production of meanings, utterances and dialogical relations, bring significant contributions to the search area.

Esta tese apresenta uma pesquisa direcionada para a análise das relações dialógicas produzidas em interações de crianças com o agente pedagógico afetivo Maga Vitta no jogo digital Città. A motivação para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho é a possibilidade de tornar mais natural e mais contextualizada a relação entre o agente pedagógico afetivo e as crianças em sala de aula, verificando, assim, no que este estudo pode contribuir para criar mecanismos de diálogos entre o agente e o estudante voltados para jogos digitais na educação, no contexto escolar das crianças. Também, está direcionada para as pesquisas comprometidas com o jogo digital Città, visando ao desenvolvimento e melhorias do ambiente educacional, considerando que o mesmo está em constante evolução. A partir das interações das crianças com este jogo digital, busca-se resolver o problema de pesquisa que está focado em verificar como são essas relações dialógicas das crianças com o agente pedagógico afetivo do jogo. Para fins de validação da pesquisa foi implementado o agente, Maga Vitta, que foi pensado juntamente com o grupo de pesquisa do projeto CIVITAS, vinculado ao LELIC – Laboratório de Estudos em Linguagem, Interação e Cognição da UFRGS da Faculdade de Educação da UFRGS, para fazer o controle ecológico da cidade digital construída por crianças no jogo Città. A ideia é fazer com que a criança possa refletir sobre suas ações no ambiente do jogo, operando com os conhecimentos que está construindo sobre uma cidade sustentável e cooperativa, considerando aspectos ecológicos e ambientais de uma cidade que se quer colocar em equilíbrio. A população-alvo são crianças dos 4º e 5º anos do Ensino Fundamental, que fazem parte do projeto CIVITAS através do desenvolvimento de cidade virtuais utilizando materiais alternativos. Os resultados dos experimentos demonstraram que a análise das relações dialógicas sobre as interações das crianças e a análise desses dados envolvendo questões ligadas aos conceitos de Bakhtin, tais como produção de sentidos, enunciados e relações dialógicas, trazem contribuições significativas para a área de pesquisa. / The present thesis presents a research focused to the analysis of dialogical relationships produced in interactions of children with the affective pedagogical agent Maga Vitta in the digital game Città. The motivation for the development of this work is the possibility of making the relationship between the agent and the kids in the classroom more natural and more contextualized, checking in what manner this study can contribute to create dialogue mechanisms between the agent and the student aiming digital games in education, in the children’s school context. The present work is also related to the researches committed to the digital game Città, aiming the development and improvement of the educational environment, once it is constantly evolving. From the interaction of children with this digital game, we aim to solve the problem of research that is focused on verifying how these dialogical relationships of children with affective pedagogical agent occur in the game. For validation purposes of research it was implemented the agent, Maga Vitta, which was thought together with the research group of the CIVITAS project, linked to the laboratory of Studies on language, interaction and Cognition of UFRGS, of Education College at the UFRGS, to do the ecological control of the digital city built by children in the game Città. The idea is to make the children able to reflect on their actions in the game environment, operating with the knowledge that they are building on a sustainable and cooperative town, considering ecological and environmental aspects of a city that we wants to put in balance. The target population is children attending to 4th and 5th grades of elementary school, who make part of the CIVITAS project through the development of virtual cities using alternative materials. The results of the experiments have shown that the analysis of dialogic relations on children's interactions and the analysis of data involving issues related to the concepts of Bakhtin, such as production of meanings, utterances and dialogical relations, bring significant contributions to the search area.

Esta tese apresenta uma pesquisa direcionada para a análise das relações dialógicas produzidas em interações de crianças com o agente pedagógico afetivo Maga Vitta no jogo digital Città. A motivação para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho é a possibilidade de tornar mais natural e mais contextualizada a relação entre o agente pedagógico afetivo e as crianças em sala de aula, verificando, assim, no que este estudo pode contribuir para criar mecanismos de diálogos entre o agente e o estudante voltados para jogos digitais na educação, no contexto escolar das crianças. Também, está direcionada para as pesquisas comprometidas com o jogo digital Città, visando ao desenvolvimento e melhorias do ambiente educacional, considerando que o mesmo está em constante evolução. A partir das interações das crianças com este jogo digital, busca-se resolver o problema de pesquisa que está focado em verificar como são essas relações dialógicas das crianças com o agente pedagógico afetivo do jogo. Para fins de validação da pesquisa foi implementado o agente, Maga Vitta, que foi pensado juntamente com o grupo de pesquisa do projeto CIVITAS, vinculado ao LELIC – Laboratório de Estudos em Linguagem, Interação e Cognição da UFRGS da Faculdade de Educação da UFRGS, para fazer o controle ecológico da cidade digital construída por crianças no jogo Città. A ideia é fazer com que a criança possa refletir sobre suas ações no ambiente do jogo, operando com os conhecimentos que está construindo sobre uma cidade sustentável e cooperativa, considerando aspectos ecológicos e ambientais de uma cidade que se quer colocar em equilíbrio. A população-alvo são crianças dos 4º e 5º anos do Ensino Fundamental, que fazem parte do projeto CIVITAS através do desenvolvimento de cidade virtuais utilizando materiais alternativos. Os resultados dos experimentos demonstraram que a análise das relações dialógicas sobre as interações das crianças e a análise desses dados envolvendo questões ligadas aos conceitos de Bakhtin, tais como produção de sentidos, enunciados e relações dialógicas, trazem contribuições significativas para a área de pesquisa. / The present thesis presents a research focused to the analysis of dialogical relationships produced in interactions of children with the affective pedagogical agent Maga Vitta in the digital game Città. The motivation for the development of this work is the possibility of making the relationship between the agent and the kids in the classroom more natural and more contextualized, checking in what manner this study can contribute to create dialogue mechanisms between the agent and the student aiming digital games in education, in the children’s school context. The present work is also related to the researches committed to the digital game Città, aiming the development and improvement of the educational environment, once it is constantly evolving. From the interaction of children with this digital game, we aim to solve the problem of research that is focused on verifying how these dialogical relationships of children with affective pedagogical agent occur in the game. For validation purposes of research it was implemented the agent, Maga Vitta, which was thought together with the research group of the CIVITAS project, linked to the laboratory of Studies on language, interaction and Cognition of UFRGS, of Education College at the UFRGS, to do the ecological control of the digital city built by children in the game Città. The idea is to make the children able to reflect on their actions in the game environment, operating with the knowledge that they are building on a sustainable and cooperative town, considering ecological and environmental aspects of a city that we wants to put in balance. The target population is children attending to 4th and 5th grades of elementary school, who make part of the CIVITAS project through the development of virtual cities using alternative materials. The results of the experiments have shown that the analysis of dialogic relations on children's interactions and the analysis of data involving issues related to the concepts of Bakhtin, such as production of meanings, utterances and dialogical relations, bring significant contributions to the search area.

This study aimed to explore the impact of pedagogical agents in computer-based listening instruction on EFL students' listening anxiety levels and listening comprehension skills. A total of 66 Korean college students received computer-based listening instruction. Students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: American agent condition, Korean agent condition, or no-agent condition. Additional data sources were included in the experimental design in order to investigate students' learning experience more thoroughly. Results indicated that there were no statistical differences in listening anxiety levels and listening comprehension skills between students who worked with the agent and students who worked without the agent. In addition, there was no statistical difference in listening anxiety levels between students who worked with the Korean agent and students who worked with the American agent. However, survey findings indicated a few differences between the agent condition and the no-agent condition when students were asked to describe their learning experiences. Students from both groups enjoyed the lesson overall; however, their comments revealed some differences. Students in the agent condition regarded the agent as an important contribution to their enjoyable learning experience, and specifically chose the presence of the agent as the reason they would want to work with the program again, while students in the no-agent condition mainly enjoyed the useful functions integrated into the computer-based lesson, and indicated they would work with the program again because it was interesting and helpful. Although there were no statistical differences between the groups, these results seem to illuminate that the guidance provided by the pedagogical agent during the lesson positively affected students' learning experiences, which is in line with previous study findings. The findings from the survey can also provide suggestions regarding what aspects of pedagogical agents should be kept or improved for language learning. More data would strengthen the impact of the results. However, these findings offer practical and theoretical implications for using pedagogical agents in foreign language education.

<p>This research focuses on making animated pedagogical agents more emotionally expressive to facilitate students’ learning process and create a true connection between the agents and the students for effective learning. The author of this thesis focused on applying affective hand and arm gestures that were derived from the Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayals (GEMEP) core set of affective expressions on top of animated lecturing agents. The GEMEP database includes 145 video recordings of French actors portraying different emotions. Only arm and hand gestures were extracted from the database and were applied on top of lecturing animations of animated pedagogical agents. 131 participants participated in an online perception study where they were asked to watch different animations of six basic emotions (anger, joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and surprise) displayed by male and female characters. Results of the perception study showed that only one angry expression by the female character passed the 75% bar of recognition rate, while the remaining expressions showed a low recognition rate (1.5% -64%). The author also examined whether levels of emotion arousal and valence were correctly identified by the students. Participants’ identification of correct levels of arousal and valence was more accurate than recognition of Ekman’s basic emotions but was still not sufficient for further statistical analysis on validating hypotheses of research on observing how gender of participants and characters influence the emotion perception. Overall, significant reasons were identified that influenced the low perception rate among participants, which are discussed in the conclusion. </p>

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an animated pedagogical agent on Spanish vocabulary learning. Furthermore, the study examined learners’ reactions and attitudes towards the presence of the pedagogical agent in a web-based environment, as well as how learners used the conversational component of the pedagogical agent in their learning process. A total of 47 university students enrolled in two fourth-semester Spanish classes participated in this study. Both the Control group and the Experimental group used a web-based environment that presented new vocabulary (in audio and text), along with activities for practicing the vocabulary in context. The difference between the two groups was that an animated pedagogical agent (Laura) was present in the environment used by the Experimental group. In addition, a conversational component was added at a second phase to the environment used by the Experimental group, which the learners used to chat with the pedagogical agent about the material presented. The data were analyzed through quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative data were derived from a demographic information questionnaire, a vocabulary pre-test and two vocabulary post-tests (an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test), as well as from attitudes scales completed prior to the learners’ exposure to the web-based environments and after completing the learning sessions. The qualitative data were derived from a learning experience questionnaire completed by all learners at the end of the learning sessions, as well as from the scripts of the chat sessions between the learners in the Experimental group and the pedagogical agent, and a chatting experience questionnaire completed by the same group. Analysis of the quantitative data did not yield significant differences between the Control and the Experimental groups with respect to vocabulary learning outcomes and affective outcomes. Analysis of the qualitative data revealed learners’ preferences with respect to features embedded in the web-based language learning environments. In addition, it explored how learners utilized the conversational aspect of the pedagogical agent, and provided information as to the type of information the agent’s knowledge base should include in order for the agent to be a beneficial tool for the learners’ progress. / text

Denna studie undersökte användandet av en fiktiv maskotkaraktär som verktyg för destinationsutveckling. Arbetet utgick från ett samarbete med Platåbergens Geopark, i syfte att förenkla förmedlingen av en bredd av ämnen och platser till en helhetsbild, speciellt målgruppen barn. Grundläggande teori för arbetet är termerna fokalisering (Genette 1980) och pedagogiska agenter (Haake 2009) samt studier av fiktion och stereotyper. För att utvärdera maskotkaraktären och lämpliga attribut utfördes fem gruppintervjuer med observation där deltagare diskuterade bilder; föreställande maskotkaraktären och attribut menade att representera karaktärsrollen och Platåbergens Geopark.  Resultatet påvisar att en majoritet av utvalda attribut (både från karaktärsdesignen och separata bilder) förstärkte maskotkaraktärens syften. Dess pedagogiska roll stärktes av fakta-fokuserade attribut och kroppsspråket som tolkades vänligt. Fokaliseringen blev tydligare då klädseln och bilder föreställande verktyg var anpassade till aktiviteter som kan kopplas till geologer, geologi eller Platåbergens Geopark. Fokaliseringen påvisade en tendens att vara starkare för de utan tidigare kunskap om geoparken.

Embodied conversational agents put a “human” touch on intelligent tutoring systems by using conversation to support learning. When considering instruction in interpersonal domains, such as intercultural negotiation, the development of an interpersonal relationship with one’s pedagogical agent may play a significant role in learning. However, there is conflicting evidence in the literature both regarding the ability of agents to cultivate social relationships with humans, and their effect on learning. In this dissertation, I present a model of social dialog designed to affect learners’ interpersonal relations with virtual agents, a development process for creating social dialog, and empirical studies showing that this dialog has significant effects on learners’ perceptions of the agents and negotiation performance. In early work, I explicitly prompted learners to have social goals for the interaction. I found that while students who reported social goals for interacting with the agents had significantly higher learning gains, explicit prompting was not effective at inducing these goals. I thus focused on implicit influence of learner goals, developing a model of social instructional dialog (SID) that integrates conversational strategies that are theorized to produce interpersonal effects on relationships. In two subsequent studies, an agent with the SID model engendered greater feelings of entitativity, shared perspective, and trust, suggesting that the model improved learner social relationships with the agent. Importantly, these effects transferred to other agents encountered later in the environment. The social dialog condition also made fewer errors and achieved more negotiation objectives in a subsequent negotiation than a control group, evidence that the improved social relationship lead to better negotiation performance. These findings regarding interpersonal relationships with agents contribute to the literature on learner-agent interactions, and can guide the future development of agents in social environments.