Download Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Pedagogical Agent

Meta-Analysis of
the Effectiveness of
Pedagogical Agent
報 告 人：張純瑋
Kim, M. & Ryu, J. (2003). Meta-analysis of the
effectiveness of pedagogical agent. In Proceedings of
World Conference on Educational Multimedia,
Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2003 (pp. 479-486).
Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
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Introduction (1)
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pedagogical agents as a promising solution of
providing highly interactive communication
between learners and computer.
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to investigate how the quality of agents’ image affects
learners’ performance and/or attitude by using lifelike
agents (Atkinson, Merrill, & Patterson, 2002; Lester, Towns, & FitzGerald, 1999; Moreno,
Mayer, & Lester, 2000).
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examined animation effects in pedagogical agents (Baylor
& Ryu, In press; Craig, Gholson, & Driscoll, 2002; Johnson, Rickel, & Lester, 2000).
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researchers have studies in different knowledge
domains from affective to cognitive skills (Atkinson et al., 2002;
Johnson, 2001; Lester et al., 1997; Moreno, Mayer, Spires, & Lester, 2001).
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Introduction (2)
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the effects of pedagogical agents seem to have promise
for education.
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there is no clear distinction of what factors of pedagogical
agent have more impact on learning in either the affective
or cognitive domains.
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facilitate interactive communication between human learners and
computers in learning environments.
provide contextualized instruction, help increasing learners’
motivation, and/or enhance problem-solving skills.
Dehn & Mulken’s review focused just on human computer
interaction of agents in general (not on pedagogical agent) (only
covered to 1998).
This study was to summarize the empirical studies
conducted to evaluate the effect of pedagogical agents.
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Conceptual framework
(Definition of pedagogical agnet)
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For the purpose of the present meta-analysis, the
following definition for pedagogical agent was
formulated:
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a software entity (regardless of whether it has visual
or auditory feature) that carries out some set of
operations on behalf of a user or another program with
some degree of independence or autonomy, and it
employs some knowledge or representation of the
user’s pedagogical goals and desires.
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3. Method
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Data Filtering: by using 28 recent pedagogical agent
studies remained through data filtering, common
variables were found.
Independent variables: presence of agent (agent or no
agent), image effect (presence or absence), voice effect
(narration or text), and animation effect (presence or
absence)
Dependent variables: affective (persona effect) and
cognitive (retention & transfer test) domain.
Grouping comparisons were used for estimating average
effect size with 6 studies exactly fitted to the frame of
variables.
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Independent and dependent
variables in 6 studies
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Value of effect xize
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Summary

Presence of Agent always yielded significant effect size across
the dependent variables, Retention, Transfer, and Persona.

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the presence of agent Voice also has a strong effect across the
dependent variables.

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providing voice or narration would have a greater effect than
providing text only.
the presence of agent image positively affects Persona.

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there is a strong effect of using Agent for educational settings.
but it was not significant in learning outcome.
Animation effect was evaluated as a non-significant effect size
across the dependent variables.
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Suggestions
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a great variety of agent sin different knowledge domain is
needed
It is important to overcome the methodological shortcomings
of many existing studies such as too few subjects, repeated
measure
they should take more fine-grained perspective on the effect
of employing pedagogical agents on the user’s motivation and
cognition
further investigation of cultural difference in agent based
learning is desirable.
more deep interviews or follow up questionnaires are
recommended.
further exploration of long-term effect of agent based learning
environment should be carried out.
almost no work on considering the characteristics of the
learner has been conducted.
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End
Thank you
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