Stimulating Students’ Curiosity with a Companion Agent in Virtual Learning Environments

Agent technology can be incorporated into virtual learning environments to potentially address core issues of interest and engagement in learning. This paper proposes a learning companion agent to stimulate students’ curiosity in a virtual learning environment. Curiosity is the intrinsic motivation for learning and has been shown in educational studies to promote deep learning. The curious learning companion is designed based on the psychological theories of human curiosity and the educational practices for stimulating curiosity. The curious learning companion acts as an autonomous peer learner that accompanies students and observes their learning behaviors in a virtual learning environment. It detects curiosity-stimulating factors in the environmental context and stimulates students’ curiosity by asking thought-provoking questions. The curious learning companion is illustrated with a case scenario in Virtual Singapura.