Harness learners' drive to question and stump agents in edutainment conversational games and virtual historical figures¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 1 study (1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 1 claim rests on one study

Description¶

Because informants were driven to challenge agents' intelligence, the authors ask whether designers can "utilise this inner drive to engage learners in edutainment games of conversational interactions." They propose virtual historians, such as a digital Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill or Nelson Mandela, to motivate exploration of historical events, and expert characters, such as a geography expert, with whom students converse by asking complex questions grounded in authentic tasks like siting a hospital in San Francisco.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Conversational characters able to act as conversational partners for educational purposes, consistent with sociocultural theories of learning

Constraints¶

• The authors pose these as possibilities for action; whether students would ask complex questions or merely simple ones is an open question they raise

Target Learners¶

• students in educational contexts the designers aim to make appealing and motivating

Target Learning Goals¶

• deeper engagement with course content through questioning and conversation

Claims¶

• The lived experience of conversing with a pedagogical agent comprises five interdependent phenomenological themes [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Veletsianos, G. & Miller, C. (2008). Conversing with pedagogical agents: A phenomenological exploration of interacting with digital entities. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39, 6, 969-986. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00797.x