An empathic pedagogical conversational agent for development of computer and research competencies: a research plan

Abstract

Empathic Pedagogical Conversational Agents (PCAs) are learning tools that can favor adaptive learning in acquiring skills. Although the authors studied the effect of the learning articulated by the empathic PCAs in computer competencies, it is only focused on student perceptions. In contrast, many studies have considered the learning performance in the research competencies, but an assessment of the student perceptions and the qualitative approach is necessary. Thus, the main goal is to understand the adaptive learning articulated by an empathic PCA and its impact on the development of competencies in distributed systems and educational research in higher education. To this end, a framework is constructed to evaluate the learning outcomes of this type of learning tool (learning performance and student perceptions). The research will be a mixed method quasi-experimental. It will collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data and integrate the information into two quasi-experiments. The main expected results are to improve the integration of empathic PCAs in the education field through the construction of evidence-based algorithms. Moreover, through the integration of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing to favor advancement in the construction of better PCAs incorporating emotional features. These results will be disseminated through a compendium of publications.