Teaching and learning are highly social activities. Seminal psychologists such as Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura have theorized that social interaction is a key mechanism in the process of learning and development. In particular, the benefits of peer interaction for learning and motivation in classrooms have been broadly demonstrated through empirical studies. Hence, it would be valuable if comp...

In this article, we present a model of elearning which enable the learners to obtain pedagogical services. These services aim to response to their needs, to keep pace with their scientific curiosity and their rhythms of learning, and go down to their private desires. From this standpoint, we adopted the pedagogy of objectives as a frame of reference for a technological approach, taking from the...

Politeness may play a role in tutorial interaction, including promoting learner motivation and avoiding negative affect. Politeness theory can account for this as a means of mitigating the face threats arising in tutorial situations. It further provides a way of accounting for differences in politeness in different cultures. Research in social aspects of human-computer interaction predict that ...

In this paper, we describe an animated pedagogical agent that assists the interaction among students in a virtual class within a collaborative communication tool, either on-line or not, motivating them, correcting wrong ideas and providing new information. This guiding agent, which we call Collaboration Agent, will consider not only the cognitive capabilities of students, but also social and af...

While Learners enjoy the sense of presence and rich visualization in 3D Immersive Virtual Learning Environments, they require more interactivity and pedagogical guidance. Intelligent Pedagogical Agents, IPAs, which are autonomous and intelligent software entities can provide such demands if they are employed in the VLE. They provide interactivity (dialogues), increase motivation and engagement,...

This article describes the ExpertCop tutorial system. ExpertCop is a geosimulator of criminal dynamics in urban environments that aims to train police officers in the activity of preventive policing allocation. ExpertCop intends to i) help students comprehend the task of resources allocation and identify the variables involved; ii) induce students to reflect about their actions related to resou...

The present study was conducted to investigate if and how conversational agent can facilitate explanation activity that is conducive to learning. This was investigated through two experiments where pairs of participants, who were enrolled in a psychology course, engaged in a task of explaining to their partners the meanings of concepts of technical terms taught in the course. During the task, t...

Animated pedagogical agents are animated characters that can interact with learners in computer-based environments, in order to stimulate and encourage learning. They improve the effectiveness of education and training applications, and can also be employed in many other interactive applications to assist novice users. They draw on techniques from interactive entertainment, making them well sui...