Pedagogical Agents and Learning Systems (PALS)

Pedagogical Agents and Learning Systems (PALS)

The purpose and mission of the Pedagogical Agents and Learning Systems (PALS) Research Group is to investigate the affordances and constraints of animated pedagogical agents within eLearning environments.

What is a "pedagogical agent?" (As stated by W. Lewis Johnson):
Pedagogical agents are autonomous agents that support human learning, by interacting with students in the context of interactive learning environments. They extend and improve upon previous work on intelligent tutoring systems in a number of ways. They adapt their behavior to the dynamic state of the learning environment, taking advantage of learning opportunities as they arise. They can support collaborative learning as well as individualized learning, because multiple students and agents can interact in a shared environment. Given a suitably rich user interface, pedagogical agents are capable of a wide spectrum of instructionally effective interactions with students, including multimodal dialog. Animated pedagogical agents can promote student motivation and engagement, and engender affective as well as cognitive responses.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of this field of study, we incorporate a mixed-methods approach, including carefully designed experiments, qualitative usability studies, and micro-genetic human-agent interaction analyses.

Pedagogical Agents and Learning Systems (PALS) Projects

Investigation of pedagogical agent features that promote learning and motivation

Funded by NSF Grant #0218692 through the CISE-IIS (Computer Information Science Engineering-Intelligent Information Systems) Division. Dr. Amy Baylor is the principal investigator for this $450,000 4-year project to investigate how the following pedagogical agent features contribute to learning, motivation, and perceived agent value: A) agent image (character, realism, gender, ethnicity); B) agent animation (task-related, expressive animations); and, C) agent pre-defined roles (expert, motivational advisor, co-collaborator). See project summary.

Challenging engineering stereotypes with pedagogical agents

Dr. Baylor as PI and co-PI Dr. Ashby Plant were awarded $500,000 from the National Science Foundation for the project "Pedagogical agents as social models: Challenging gender-related stereotypes of engineering." The interdisciplinary project goals are 1) to systematically investigate the effectiveness of pedagogical agents as social models to influence girls' beliefs and stereotypes about engineering; and, in parallel, 2) to use pedagogical agents as a vehicle to systematically examine the nature of the belief-changing process. See project summary.

MIMIC (Multiple Intelligent Mentors Instructing Collaboratively)

MIMIC is an agent-based research environment developed to investigate teaching and learning in agent-based environments. The MIMIC system provides the foundation for most of our quantitative and qualitative investigations. MIMIC is a web-based application that uses Microsoft Agent technology in a .NET environment.

TuLiP (The Teacher's Lesson Planning Tool)

TuLiP is an XML-web based lesson planning tool that allows teachers to rapidly develop a range of educational materials using Learning Objects and provides products in alternative formats from printed lesson plans to content using wireless and PDA technology for instruction.

Research Projects >
Research Projects >