Education in the Knowledge Society (Aug 2013)
Analysis of the experience of using a pedagogic conversational agent for reading comprehension in the school
Abstract
Technologies are key in society, and they are in continuous progress. In the educational context, an increase of using new technologies for education can be identified in the last years. One of these new technologies is Pedagogic Conversational Agents. That is, computer systems that interact with the students in spoken or written natural language. They can adopt the role of teacher, student or pal. In the 2011/2012 academic year, we used a Pedagogic Conversational Agent called Dr. Roland in class to solve Maths problems. 38 students and 3 teachers were involved in the experience. In this paper, an analysis of the experience and how to integrate agents in the school is presented. Ten recommendations as a guide for teachers, researchers and developers interested in using this type of educational software are proposed from the analysis. Some of these recommendations are to combine the use of computers with other devices such as tablets that make the use of the system by several students easier, to involve the parents to foster the use of the agent at home, and to validate each step of the advances made with teachers, parents and students so that they are adapted to their needs.
