Socially Intelligent Agents to Improve the Effectiveness of Educational Games
Cristina Conati, Maria M. Klawe · 2000
We describe preliminary research on devising intelligent agents that can improve the educational effectiveness of collaborative, educational computer games. We illustrate how these agents can overcome some of the shortcomings of educational games by explicitly monitoring how students interact with the games, by modeling both the students' cognitive and emotional states, and by generating calibrated interventions to trigger constructive reasoning and reflection when needed. Introduction In this paper, we explore the potential of enriching educational computer games with socially intelligent agents that can help students learn effectively from the games while maintaining the high level of engagement and motivation that constitutes the strong appeal of electronic games in non-educational settings. Our research is developed in the context of EGEMS, the Electronic Games for Education in Math and Science project at the University of British Columbia (UBC). EGEMS is an interdisciplinary pro...