MSTU 5030: Intelligent Computer-Assisted Instruction - GHuntley Blog

1) Out of all the different pedagogical agents and intelligent computer-assisted instructional systems introduced in this week and past readings, which agent/system did you find most interesting and why?  Although not really a pedagogical agent, ELIZA is a computer program that really stands out to me. I especially liked being able to try out ELIZA myself to get a sense of how it apply Rogerian theory to build its responses. As someone with a background in mental health, I enjoyed how the creators used the reflection, validation, and summary-based structure of Carl Roger's client-centered therapy to inform ELIZA's responses.  One of the pedagogical agents that really stood out to me was the teachable agent  Betty's Brain . I like the idea of students learning by teaching an agent. I think that idea is based on solid pedagogical theory and is a idea that many teachers employ even without using agents, for example when students are tasked with tutoring other individuals. I...

If the authors from the Corbett & Anderson’s article read the paper on Explanatory Learner Models back in 1995 when their article was originally published, do you think this may have influenced their research (why or why not)?  In any industry, 24 years is an exceptionally long period of time. In technology, 24 years is practically another era. For this and other reasons, I do believe that had Corbett & Anderson (1995) had access to the article on explanatory learner models by Rosé & McLaughlin (2019), their research and subsequent article may have trended in a very different direction.  In their article, Corbett & Anderson (1995) focused on a model that described "students' changing knowledge state during skill acquisition" (p. 253). It is worth noting that at the time, Corbett & Anderson (1995) were also iterating and expanding on the status quo idea of "mastery learning" and were attempting to "bring a cognitive model of skill acquisi...

1) How are the two agents similar and different in their a) design of the agent and b) interaction with the learner? Betty's Brain The teachable agent examined by Schwartz et al. (2009), Betty's Brain, allows students to apply interactive metacognition, where the act of teaching Betty helps learners strengthen their own metacognitive skills and results in better learning outcomes.  Betty's Brain was "designed for knowledge domains where qualitative causal chains are a useful structural abstraction (e.g., the life sciences) (Schwartz et al., 2009, p. 5). When interacting with Betty, students teach her by "creating a concept map of nodes connected by qualitative causal links" (Schwartz et al., 2009, p. 5). Betty answers and asks questions based on her understanding of the concepts. She can also animate her reasoning process, which enables users to track her reasoning and "remediate" her knowledge if necessary. (Schwartz et al., 2009, p. 5). Features...

Artifacts at Various Stages of the Uncanny Valley Curve For each of these either pedagogical agents or intelligent computer-assisted instructional systems, I will endeavor to answer the following questions: How the student will interact with the agent/system (and why)? What the agent/system may be capable of when it comes to evaluating/assessing student's learning (and why)?  For what kind of learning would such agent/system be good for (and why)? Not being familiar with the majority of these agents before this exercise, I'll do my best to answer the questions based on my first impressions.  Hal Since Hal does not resemble a human physically, but does seem to have speech capabilities, I would recommend it for tasks that don't require a high level of empathy with the agent. Although there are examples/exceptions to the rule that a human form will result in a higher level of trust, such as in the film Her (2013), I believe that Hal will mostly be useful for thi...