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How do you introduce an agent? - The effect of introduction type on how a teachable agent is experienced by students

Silvervarg, Annika and Månsson, Kristian LU (2018) 18th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2018 p.29-34
Abstract

Many studies have been, and are currently, conducted on how virtual agents should be designed and used for training and learning. In this paper we address the question of how such agents are introduced to users in systems and classroom settings, and the possible effect that have on how they are perceived, and the reactions and behavior that they invoke. We specifically investigated a system where students are expected to teach history to a virtual agent,i.e. teachable agent, and compared students that only got the system’s built in introduction to the agent and the narrative of the system, to students that in addition got a short verbal introduction in the classroom. We saw an effect of the additional verbal introduction in that those... (More)

Many studies have been, and are currently, conducted on how virtual agents should be designed and used for training and learning. In this paper we address the question of how such agents are introduced to users in systems and classroom settings, and the possible effect that have on how they are perceived, and the reactions and behavior that they invoke. We specifically investigated a system where students are expected to teach history to a virtual agent,i.e. teachable agent, and compared students that only got the system’s built in introduction to the agent and the narrative of the system, to students that in addition got a short verbal introduction in the classroom. We saw an effect of the additional verbal introduction in that those students to a significantly higher extent perceived the agent as someone who wanted to learn, and that these students self-reportedly made more effort and did not want to give up to a higher extent. Thus, we conclude that is important to further consider the effects of how agents are introduced to users both when designing systems as well as when designing and reporting experiments.

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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
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organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Educational Software, Pedagogical Agents, Teachable Agents, User studies, Virtual Agents
host publication
Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2018
pages
6 pages
publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
conference name
18th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2018
conference location
Sydney, Australia
conference dates
2018-11-05 - 2018-11-08
external identifiers
  • scopus:85058447396
ISBN
9781450360135
DOI
10.1145/3267851.3267861
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
97756a93-8e34-4368-a8f0-db8d9be64a0c
date added to LUP
2019-01-04 13:46:52
date last changed
2022-01-31 08:16:06
@inproceedings{97756a93-8e34-4368-a8f0-db8d9be64a0c,
  abstract     = {{<p>Many studies have been, and are currently, conducted on how virtual agents should be designed and used for training and learning. In this paper we address the question of how such agents are introduced to users in systems and classroom settings, and the possible effect that have on how they are perceived, and the reactions and behavior that they invoke. We specifically investigated a system where students are expected to teach history to a virtual agent,i.e. teachable agent, and compared students that only got the system’s built in introduction to the agent and the narrative of the system, to students that in addition got a short verbal introduction in the classroom. We saw an effect of the additional verbal introduction in that those students to a significantly higher extent perceived the agent as someone who wanted to learn, and that these students self-reportedly made more effort and did not want to give up to a higher extent. Thus, we conclude that is important to further consider the effects of how agents are introduced to users both when designing systems as well as when designing and reporting experiments.</p>}},
  author       = {{Silvervarg, Annika and Månsson, Kristian}},
  booktitle    = {{Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2018}},
  isbn         = {{9781450360135}},
  keywords     = {{Educational Software; Pedagogical Agents; Teachable Agents; User studies; Virtual Agents}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{11}},
  pages        = {{29--34}},
  publisher    = {{Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}},
  title        = {{How do you introduce an agent? - The effect of introduction type on how a teachable agent is experienced by students}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3267851.3267861}},
  doi          = {{10.1145/3267851.3267861}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}