Title: Effectiveness of Pedagogical Agents in Regulating Students' Understanding of Science
PI: Roger Azevedo
Co-PIs: Art Graesser, Danielle McNamara, and Vasile Rus
Amount: $904,581
Funding period: 2006-2009

This 3-year grant focuses on examining the effectiveness of using animated pedagogical agents (APAs) as external regulatory agents designed to foster middle school and college students¡¯ understanding of complex and challenging science topics (e.g., the circulatory system). Contemporary cognitive and educational research provides evidence that the potential of computer-based learning environments for facilitating learning may be severely undermined by students¡¯ inability to regulate several aspects of the learning. For example, students should regulate key cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, social, and affective processes in order to learn about complex and challenging science topics. This research will be conducted in the context of a mixed-initiative intelligent tutoring system called AutoTutor that simulates the discourse patterns and pedagogical strategies of human tutors.
The focus of our grant is on conducting interdisciplinary research examining:
(1) the role of embedded animated pedagogical agents in collecting data of the complex interactions between cognitive and metacognitive processes during learning about complex science topics with AutoTutor;
(2) the effectiveness of animated pedagogical agents as external regulating agents used to detect, trace, model, and foster students¡¯ self-regulatory processes during learning about complex science topics with AutoTutor; and
(3) the effectiveness of scaffolding methods delivered by animated pedagogical agents in facilitating middle school and college students¡¯ self-regulated learning about complex science topics with AutoTutor.