Pedagogical Agents to Support Embodied, Discovery-based Learning

This paper presents a pedagogical agent designed to support students in an embodied, discovery-based learning environment. Discovery-based learning guides students through a set of activities designed to foster particular insights. In this case, the animated agent explains how to use the Mathematical Imagery Trainer for Proportionality, provides performance feedback, leads students to have different experiences and provides remedial instruction when required. It is a challenging task for agent technology as the amount of concrete feedback from the learner is very limited, here restricted to the location of two markers on the screen. A Dynamic Decision Network is used to automatically determine agent behavior, based on a deep understanding of the tutorial protocol. A pilot evaluation showed that all participants developed movement schemes supporting proto-proportional reasoning. They were able to provide verbal proto-proportional expressions for one of the taught strategies, but not the other.