| dc.description.abstract | This study investigates the design of virtual pets as educational virtual characters. In the research field of educational virtual characters, computers are traditionally simulated as intelligent tutors to provide personalized instruction, or as learning companions to provide peer-like interactions based on the technology of artificial intelligence and multimedia technologies. However, most of these systems emphasize the cognitive aspect rather than the affective aspect, and utilize “system-initiative strategy” to monitor the learners’ cognitive status for appropriate interventions. Instead, this study highlights the affective aspect prior to the cognitive aspect, and proposes the concept of animal companion based on the “learner-initiative strategy.” That is, computers are simulated as care-needed pets to motivate learners to learn through game-based learning models.
Pet-keeping is a pervasive culture in the human’s life. People, particularly children, seem to have natural attachment to their pets. Analyzing the keeper-to-pets relationship, we could find two apparent characteristics: responsible attitude and attachment relationship. These two characteristics are also crucial to learning. Learners should be encouraged to be responsible for their learning, and make efforts constantly for long period of time. Therefore, based on such rationales, an animal companion system, My-Pet-Our-Pet, is implemented to explore the design and applications: open learner model and game-based learning.
In terms of open learner model, to overcome the two challenges of usage motivation and interactivity, animal companions are portrayed as open learner models to benefit children’s learning in motivation, reflection, and member interactions. Furthermore, in terms of game-based learning, a loosely-coupling structure invented by a salt design perspective is proposed. Learning activities are incorporated with game activities with the loosely-coupling way. Contrast to the sugar perspective, the salt perspective means that learning requires constant efforts and sweat. Several game elements, such as pet-nurturing, pet-training, and pet-competition, are embedded in to the learning model. The rationale of such design is to make learning more enjoyable and to encourage students’ effort-making learning behaviors.
A trial study was conducted in a 31 fifth-grade pupil classroom for collecting feedbacks and comments on My-Pet-Our-Pet system. A student keeps her own individual animal companion, called My-Pet, which holds the open learner model of the student, and each team has a team animal companion, called Our-Pet, which owns their open group learner model. The results revealed that pupils gave positive affective comments on the portrait of animal companions as open learner model, and were willing to participate in learning activities for taking good care of My-Pet. Nevertheless, the driving force of Our-Pet is not as successful as that of My-Pet.
In addition, a between-subjects experiment was conducted among three fifth-grade classes (totally 68 pupils) to examine the effect of three key components in the My-Pet system: digital content, pet-nurturing, and pet-competition. Therefore, three different versions of My-Pet systems were used by three groups. The result showed that the presence of My-Pet is helpful to the pupils’ perception of enjoyable experience. In addition, the complete version (containing digital content, pet-nurturing, and pet-competition) has a better learning quality. That is, the group got more improved score during a shorter period of time. | en_US |