University of Twente Student Theses
A coach ECA to increase Societal Participation of Low Literates and Non-Native Citizens in the Societal Participation Learning Support System
Deneka, Agnes (2014) A coach ECA to increase Societal Participation of Low Literates and Non-Native Citizens in the Societal Participation Learning Support System.
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| Abstract: | This is a study from the “Social conventions learning in mixed reality”- project and focused on the use of an embodied conversational agent in the role of a coach (coach ECA) in a societal participation learning support system (SPLSS). The intention behind the use of the coach ECA was to build an effective support tool for the SPLSS that contributes beneficially to increase societal participation learning of low literates and non-native citizens. In particular, we investigated whether or not the use of a coach ECA is beneficial in the SPLSS in which the coach ECA was aimed at training information (researching and comprehending information) and communication skills (the ability to communicate with other people through different ways communication methods) of low literates and non-native citizens like the ability to read, write, speak, and understand language and communicate in different everyday situations. In order to train these skills the coach ECA was designed on three different dimensions and provided socio-relational (establish trust), cognitive (train skills), and affective (motivate and increase self-efficacy) support. The coach ECA interacted with the users throughout the SPLSS covering these three dimensions for support. While using the SPLSS, the users were exposed to two different scenarios which summarize formal situations that require information or communication skills for participation. In the evaluation of the coach ECA, the users were asked to complete exercises within these scenarios. For the evaluation procedure, the users were going to complete the exercises in the system once with and once without the support of the coach ECA. In order to answer the question whether or not the coach ECA is beneficial for the SPLSS, the user experience and task performance in both conditions were evaluated and compared with each other. The results show that the coach ECA can be beneficial for the SPLSS, however only under certain circumstances. We found out that the coach ECA had strongest effects on information skills of which participants experienced an increase after they used the SPLSS. Hence, the most influential exercise revealed to be the information field scenario using online banking in a high difficulty level in which the coach ECA seemed to be most beneficial in the way we designed the coach ECA in the cognitive dimension. Basically, this points at a strong influence of the cognitive dimension on the user, however more investigations need to be done in order to prove the other two dimensions using socio-relational and affective learning support to contribute to a beneficial use of the coach ECA in the SPLSS and increase societal participation learning of low literates and non-native citizens. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 54 computer science, 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Interaction Technology MSc (60030) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/66518 |
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