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The Impact Of User Attributes And User Choice In An Agent-Based Environment, Yanghee Kim, Quan Wei

Yanghee Kim

This study examined the impact of learners’ attributes (gender and ethnicity) on their choice of a pedagogical agent and the impact of the attributes and choice on their perceptions of agent affability, task-specific attitudes, task-specific self-efficacy, and learning gains. Participants were 210 high-school male and female, Caucasian and Hispanic students who worked at computer-based algebra integrated with pedagogical agents. The results indicated, first, that students preferentially chose a same-gender agent and a same-ethnicity agent, supporting similarity-attraction theory. Second, males who chose an agent showed more positive attitudes toward working at the learning environment than did males who were assigned to …