A Pedagogical Agent's Impact in an Open Learning Environment

Research suggests that in learning environments that aim at factual knowledge acquisition pedagogical agents can act as tools to direct students’ learning processes. Whether pedagogical agents have a similar impact in more open learning environments has not yet been addressed. In order to fill this gap, this contribution discusses a study in which two experimental conditions are compared to a control condition. In the first experimental condition the pedagogical agent’s interventions are adapted to students’ activities (APA-group). In the second experimental group the agent interferes on fixed time intervals (NPA-group). Results show that the NPA-group outperforms the APA group, while the latter does not differ from the control group.