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Full-Text Articles in Education
An Embodied Agent Helps Anxious Students In Mathematics Learning, Yanghee Kim, Jeffrey L. Thayne, Quan Wei
An Embodied Agent Helps Anxious Students In Mathematics Learning, Yanghee Kim, Jeffrey L. Thayne, Quan Wei
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
Mathematics anxiety is known to be detrimental to mathematics learning. This study explored if an embodied agent could be used to help alleviate student anxiety in classrooms. To examine this potential, agent-guided algebra lessons were developed, in which an animated agent was equipped with prescriptive instructional guidance and anxiety treating messages. The lessons were deployed in regular mathematics classrooms, one lesson per day over a week, with 138 boys and girls in the 9th grade in the United States. After taking the weeklong agent-based lessons, students decreased in their mathematics anxiety (p = .042) and increased in mathematics learning …
Digital Peers To Help Children's Text Comprehension And Perception, Yanghee Kim
Digital Peers To Help Children's Text Comprehension And Perception, Yanghee Kim
Yanghee Kim
Affable Reading Tutor (ART) is an online reading lesson designed for children who start reading to comprehend. A digital, human-like character (virtual peer) in ART serves as a peer model that demonstrates the use of the reading comprehension strategy questioning to help improve the learners’ comprehension of expository texts. This study, with 141 boys and girls in the fourth and fifth grades in the United States, examined the effects of virtual-peer presence (presence vs. absence vs. control) on learners’ text comprehension and also the effects of learner gender and virtual-peer attributes (human-like male vs. human-like female vs. robot still image) …
Gendered Socialization With An Embodied Agent: Creating A Social And Affable Mathematics Learning Environment For Middle-Grade Females, Yanghee Kim, Jae Hoon Lim
Gendered Socialization With An Embodied Agent: Creating A Social And Affable Mathematics Learning Environment For Middle-Grade Females, Yanghee Kim, Jae Hoon Lim
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
This study examined whether or not embodied-agent-based learning would help middle-grade females have more positive mathematics learning experiences. The study used an explanatory mixed-methods research design. First, a classroom-based experiment was conducted with one hundred and twenty 9th-graders learning introductory algebra (53% male and 47% female; 51% Caucasian and 49% Latino). The results revealed that learner gender was a significant factor in the learners’ evaluations of their agent (η2 = .07), the learners’ task-specific attitudes (η2 = .05), and their task-specific self-efficacy (η2 = .06). In-depth interviews were then conducted with 22 students selected from the experiment participants. The interviews …
The Impact Of User Attributes And User Choice In An Agent-Based Environment, Yanghee Kim, Quan Wei
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 …