In two interventions, 139 and 52 preschool children, age 4-6, from low-SES communities in Sweden, used a play&-learn game in early mathematics for 10 weeks, about 20 min at a time. 50 % of the participating children were Swedish second language speakers with low language proficiency and about 20 % had learning vulnerabilities in the form of developmental language disorders and neurocognitive diagnoses. In contrast to teachers' predictions ahead of the interventions, game log data and teacher observations regarding children's sustained attention and perseverance - core elements of 'learning-related behaviors' - suggest that a majority of children, including children with reported learning difficulties, did well with respect to sustained attention and perseverance. It is proposed that the interventions allowed children with learning difficulties to demonstrate - and practice - these skills to a larger degree than expected. A relative difference in outcome between the two interventions is interpreted as an effect of differences in structured guidance and scaffolding by teachers and peers. Educational relevance statement: The two intervention studies reported in the paper engaged preschool children, age 4-6, in using a play-&-learn educational game in early mathematics for 10 weeks, about 20 min at a time. The children were from environments with low SES indexes. A substantial part of the participants were Swedish second language speakers with low language proficiency and some children had different neurocognitive diagnoses. Ahead of the intervention studies teachers raised doubts regarding the intervention setup, predicting that many children would not be able to stay sufficiently focused on the learning activities. Teachers also predicted that many children would have difficulties to engage in the learning activities as long as 20 min and to hold out all through the intervention period. In contrast to the predictions the data suggests that a majority of the children - including children with learning difficulties - managed well. Specifically, most of the children who encountered substantial challenges in gameplay, again including children with learning difficulties, showed high degrees of perseverance as well as sustained attention. In practical terms the results, together with similar and related results, suggest that high-quality early math activities can have a dual benefit and promote not only growth of math skills, but also growth of central basic skills such as perseverance and sustained attention. With the pressure many preschool teachers experience regarding pedagogical requirements, it may ease their burden to know that growth of more than one important skill can be targeted by one and the same intervention.

Today, huge amounts of data are produced, collected, and presented in all kinds of contexts. The ability to critically examine and evaluate information and arguments in relation to empirical evidence is often referred to as information literacy. It is of utmost importance that students are adequately scaffolded to develop this ability, to be able to become democratic citizens. The study presented combines learning science and drama to explore whether this approach can make 6 grade students more aware of certain aspects of information literacy, such as false balance, the burden of proof, and filter bubbles. Half of the students watched a play and participated in a pedagogical follow-up before answering a questionnaire. The other half answered the questionnaire before the intervention. Results show that students watching the play had grasped the core of the more tangible questions, writing more elaborated and relevant answers than students in the control group.

In this paper, we argue for the importance of conducting replication studies over various schools and countries when addressing topics about learning and instruction and propose educational technology to be a tool for this endeavor. We present an example of a cross-cultural replication study that makes use of educational technology in the form of a digital game-based automated feedback system. The study addresses feedback related behavior in 11-15-year-old students in US and Swedish classrooms, investigating students' choices to seek confirmatory (i.e., positive) or critical (i.e., negative) feedback, as well as their subsequent choices to revise their work based on this feedback. Comparisons of the data collected at several schools in the US and Sweden showed similar patterns of relationships among students' feedback-seeking behavior, their tendency to revise their work, and their learning outcomes in and outside the assessment environment. Overall, the findings revealed that this assessment approach seems to be generalizable from a North American to a European population. However, the findings showed both a significant difference between Sweden and the US regarding the preference for critical feedback and between different schools within each country. Thus, it is possible that the difference between countries reflects school differences rather than cultural differences.

The use of educational digital tools - both within and outside the classroom - has opened up for novel ways to investigate and pursue research on learning. For instance, the built-in intelligence that many applications have may also log the learner's actual activities, transforming them into models and statistics. Research reveals that such data-traces sometimes point in other directions than traditional self-reports, where students are asked about their learning activities or their use of a certain application or system. We wished to pursue this line of inquiry and explore if there are some types of estimations that correlate with objective measures, and hence if some types of estimations are better carried out through objective measures than through self-reports. Our study compared data-logged activities (clicks and eye-tracking measures) with self-reports on game-behavior for two types of estimations (requests for more feedback and reading feedback). To our knowledge, this kind of inquiry, comparing different types of data on feedback management, is rare. The results reveal that even if the students were quite good at estimating and reporting their requests for more feedback (in terms of clicks), they were substantially poorer at evaluating the extent of feedback messages they had read. These findings suggest that estimations of tasks that require more complex inner cognitive processes (e.g. reading) are more difficult for students themselves to report appropriately - whereas more procedural processes or concrete behaviors (i. e. clicking) are easier. These results are further discussed together with possible limitations in the measures used.

Virtual Reality has long been proposed to combine the reliability of controlled laboratory settings with the ecological validity of real life. While the technological development steadily pushes towards even more realistic renderings of the real world-the elusiveness of social and emotional elements gradually becomes more evident. This is not the least true for behavioral studies in rich sociocultural contexts. This article examines the outcomes of a study on distractions, taking place in a socially rich context-the classroom. The study made use of a Virtual Reality environment simulating a junior high school lesson, where the Distraction condition consisted of peers watching nonrelevant content on their laptops. In the control condition these laptops were closed. No significant distraction effects were found, neither on learning nor behavior. Given the strong support in the literature for such effects, the study design, including technical aspects, is scrutinized and discussed. We specifically highlight the difficulty of simulating a social relationship between the participant and agents in VR, which in this case makes the distraction stimulus significantly weaker. It is argued that the distraction effect of nearby peers laptop use relies (partly) on shared attention with social agents with an established social relation and common interests.

Syftet med detta kapitel är att belysa det mångvetenskapliga forskningsfältet learning science. Utifrån en konkret studie försöker vi illustrera den centrala roll som forskningsfrågorna har samt hur fältet förhåller sig till metoder, teorier och kunskapsanspråk.

Does a teachable agent influence the uptake or neglect of critical constructive feedback and learning within a digital environment? 285 middle-school students engaged with a history learning game in a 2x2 study design. One dimension was inclusion of a teachable agent. Orthogonal was whether critical constructive feedback was presented automatically or only when students chose. Analyses showed that a teachable agent positively affected students responses to feedback and mitigated feedback neglect; the results were especially strong for lower-achieving students. Additionally, presence of a teachable agent improved post-test performance for students overall, and this effect was mediated by lower feedback neglect.

The paper presents a systematic examination of data from two early math interventions, involving 188 children aged 3,5-6,5 and their teachers. The aim is to cast light on how a digital early math game can be spontaneously extended into the physical environment by children and by teachers. Questions were: i) how the math content was extended to the physical room, ii) which elements of the game and the interventions inspired and provided affordances for the extensions iii) implications for children’s learning of early math. The analyses revealed a great variety of ways in which children and teachers – acting on their own or together – brought the game out to the physical room. Among the underlying factors for this were everyone’s experiences with the game, familiar narratives, and simple game design in terms of rules and visual features. Finally, positive influences on early math learning from the extensions were identified.

Background

Previous research shows that critical constructive feedback, that scaffolds students to improve on tasks, often remains untapped. The paper’s aim is to illuminate at what stages students provided with such feedback drop out of feedback processing.

Methods

In our model, students can drop out at any of five stages of feedback processing: (1) noticing, (2) decoding, (3) making sense, (4) acting upon, and (5) using feedback to make progress. Eye-tracking was used to measure noticing and decoding of feedback. Behavioral data-logging tracked students’ use of feedback and potential progress. Three feedback signaling conditions were experimentally compared: a pedagogical agent, an animated arrow, and no signaling (control condition).

Findings

Students dropped out at each stage and few made it past the final stage. The agent condition led to significantly less feedback neglect at the two first stages, suggesting that students who are not initially inclined to notice and read feedback text can be influenced into doing so.

Contribution

The study provides a model and method to build more fine-grained knowledge of students’ (non)processing of feedback. More knowledge on at what stages students drop out and why can inform methods to counteract drop out and scaffold more productive and fruitful responses.

Digitally animated characters are promising tools in research studying how we integrate information from speech and visual sources such as gestures because they allow specific gesture features to be manipulated in isolation. We present an approach combining motion capture and 3D-animated characters that allows us to manipulate natural individual gesture strokes for experimental purposes, for example to temporally shift and present gestures in ecologically valid sequences. We exemplify how such stimuli can be used in an experiment investigating implicit detection of speech–gesture (a) synchrony, and discuss the general applicability of the workflow for research in this domain.

This study investigated how preschool children processed and understood critical information in Magical Garden, a teachable agent-based play-&-learn game targeting early math. We analyzed 36 children’s (ages 4–6 years) real-time behavior during game-use to explore whether children: (i) processed the information meant to support number sense development; (ii) showed an understanding of the teachable agent as an entity with agency. An important methodological goal was to go beyond observable behavior and shed some light on how cognitive processing and understanding in children of such young age can be studied. First, the children played Magical Garden for three weeks to get acquainted with the game. Second, in an experimental part of the study, the children’s gaze behaviors were measured during 5 rounds of interaction with an experimental version of one of the sub-games. The analyses suggest that two of the gaze behaviors were positively correlated with the game performance measure, as hypothesized. Another result was that children looked at the teachable agent significantly more often when the teachable agent had been in charge of gameplay than when it had not. This can be interpreted as an indication that the children had an understanding of their teachable agent as an entity that, like themselves and unlike other dynamic visual elements in the game, made decisions based on own ‘knowledge’. In a broader context, the findings are important in showing the potential gains of combining log data with eye-tracking data for developing and refining AI algorithms for adaptive individual feedback and scaffolding.

This study examines the effects of teachable agents’ expressed self-efficacy on students. A total of 166 students, 10- to 11-years-old, used a teachable agent-based math game focusing on the base-ten number system. By means of data logging and questionnaires, the study compared the effects of high vs. low agent self-efficacy on the students’ in-game performance, their own math self-efficacy, and their attitude towards their agent. The study further explored the effects of matching vs. mismatching between student and agent with respect to self-efficacy. Overall, students who interacted with an agent with low self-efficacy performed better than students interacting with an agent with high self-efficacy. This was especially apparent for students who had reported low self-efficacy themselves, who performed on par with students with high self-efficacy when interacting with a digital tutee with low self-efficacy. Furthermore, students with low self-efficacy significantly increased their self-efficacy in the matched condition, i.e. when instructing a teachable agent with low self-efficacy. They also increased their self-efficacy when instructing a teachable agent with high self-efficacy, but to a smaller extent and not significantly. For students with high self-efficacy, a potential corresponding effect on a self-efficacy change due to matching may be hidden behind a ceiling effect. As a preliminary conclusion, on the basis of the results of this study, we propose that teachable agents should preferably be designed to have low self-efficacy.

For learning to take place in digital learning environments, learners need to use educational software – more or less – as intended. However, previous studies show that some school children, instead of trying to learn and master a skill, choose to systematically exploit or outsmart the system to gain progress. But what about preschoolers? The present study explores the presence of this kind of behavioral patterns among preschoolers who use a teachable agent-based play-&-learn game in early math. We analyzed behavioral data logs together with interviews and observations. We also analyzed action patterns deviating from the pedagogical design intentions in terms of non-harmful gaming, harmful gaming, and wheel-spinning. Our results reveal that even if pedagogically not intended use of the game did occur, harmful gaming was rare. Interestingly, the results also indicate an unexpected awareness in children of what it means to learn and to teach. Finally, we present a series of possible adjustments of the used software in order to decrease gaming-like behavior or strategies that signalize insufficient skills or poor learning.

In a study with 108 10- to 12-year-olds who used a digital educational game targeting history, we addressed the phenomenon of perseverance, that is, the tendency to stick with a task even when it is challenging. The educational game was designed to make all students encounter tasks they did not succeed to solve, at which point they were offered a set of choices corresponding to perseverance and non-perseverance. Methods used were behavioral log data, post-questionnaires, and an in-game questionnaire conducted by a game character, who asked the students about the reason for their choice. Overall, we found no differences between high and low-perseverance students as to their experiences of effort, difficulty, and learning, and neither in their self-reported motives for persevering – when doing so. With respect to performance, however, high-persevering students solved significantly more tasks at higher difficulty levels. Comparing high-perseverance students who tended to take a break directly after a failed test – before they continued with the same task – with those who did not take a break, we found no significant differences, indicating that taking a break is not detrimental to learning and perseverance.

The present study examines behavioral and metacognitive effects of visualizing acquired knowledge in instructional software. This was done by letting 117 Swedish primary school students use two varieties of an educational game – one with and one without a tool where tokens with knowledge related content were received as proofs of achievement. Although no significant positive impact of the tool was found, the study reveals interesting findings regarding the challenges of visualizing knowledge in learning applications.

This study explored the effects of adding visual continuous feedback in the form of feedback bars to a teachable-agent based learning game in mathematics. Forty-five (45) children, 8- to 12-years-old, from three Swedish school classes used the game during four math lessons. The focus was on how feedback to the students regarding their teachable agents learning progression – and different detailedness of such feedback – affects how the students (in a teacher role) experience the learning game. The results suggest that students were positive towards receiving immediate and continuous feedback, but their preferences with respect to the detailedness of the feedback differed according to their age. We found a divergence as to the preferred number of bars, where the 3rd and 5th graders preferred 1 or 3 bars but where the 2nd graders preferred the more detailed version (6 bars) despite their lack of understanding of what the different bars represented.

Denna systematiska översikt sammanställer forskning om digitala lärresurser för att ut­veckla barns och elevers kunskaper i matematik. Forskningen spänner över förskolan till och med gymnasieskolan och anknyter specifikt till matematikundervisningen. I denna rapport redovisas översiktens resultat för grund-och gymnasieskolan.

De digitala lärresurser som studeras erbjuder alla en interaktivitet. Det betyder att eleverna är aktiva i relation till lärresursen i själva undervisningssituationen.

De frågor som besvaras i rapporten är:

• Vilka effekter har matematikundervisning med digitala lärresurser på elevers kunskaper i matematik?
• Vad kan förklara om en matematikundervisning med digitala lärre- surser har effekt eller inte på elevers kunskaper i matematik?

Översikten har sin bakgrund bland annat i lärares frågor om huruvida undervisning med hjälp av digitala lärresurser kan påverka elevers kunskapsutveckling.

Digitala lärresurser i grund- och gymnasieskolan

Det vetenskapliga underlaget består av 75 studier. Endast två studier är gjorda i Sverige, men alla studier berör ett matematikinnehåll som är relevant för den svenska skolan. Upp till och med årskurs 6 dominerar digitala lärresurser med fokus på området tal och taluppfattning, men det finns studier som behandlar annat innehåll, till exempel algebra eller geometri. I högre årskurser är det vanligaste innehållet algebra samt samband och förändring.

När det gäller matematiska förmågor är det många digitala lärresurser som fokuserar på begrepps-och proceduranvändning, men även bland dem kan ofta också aktiviteter som involverar andra förmågor adresseras, såsom problemlösnings-och resonemangsförmåga.

Vi har kunnat identifiera fem olika huvudkategorier av digitala lärresurser för matematikundervisning i grund-och gymnasieskolan:

• Uppgifter: lärresurser som levererar matematikuppgifter tillsammans med vägledning eller individanpassning. Uppgifterna och vägledningen regleras i många fall utifrån hur användaren presterar.
• Objekt: lärresurser med vilka matematik och matematiska objekt, till exempel geometriska former, kan representeras genom att utnyttja det digitala mediet.
• Spel: lärresurser som utnyttjar spelmekanismer såsom uppdrag, utmaningar, belöningar och tävlingsmoment för att förmedla ett ämnesinnehåll. Spel
• karaktäriseras ofta av lekfullt utforskande inom ramen för en berättelse.
• ––Verktyg: lärresurser som har tagits fram i ett annat syfte än för att bedriva undervisning, men som kan användas i matematikundervisningssammanhang, till exempel ett kalkyl-eller grafritande program.
• ––Kurspaket: lärresurser av ett mer omfattande slag som kan innehålla flera funktioner och beröra många matematikområden. Ofta är kurspaketen tänkta att användas som ett komplement under en längre tid, till exempel under en hel årskurs. I vissa fall handlar det om undervisningspaket som består av olika kombinationer av digitala lärresurser och tryckt material samt lektionsupplägg, lärarhandlingar och kompetensutveckling för lärarna.

Kategorierna är inte exakta och det finns överlapp mellan dem. Vid kategoriseringen strävade vi efter att hitta en huvudmekanism för lärresursen i fråga.

Undervisning med digitala lärresurser kan ha positiva effekter

Genomgången visar tydligt att det går att konstruera digitala lärresurser som kan använ­das för att utveckla många olika matematiska förmågor, i synnerhet om de används i en i övrigt rik undervisningsmiljö. Men det går inte att dra slutsatsen att en lika effektiv undervisning inte skulle kunna utformas på andra sätt, utan digitala lärresurser.

Gynnsamt med ett tydligt fokus på tröskelbegrepp

Det är positivt för elevers kunskapsutveckling om undervisning med digitala lärresurser har ett avgränsat matematikinnehåll som eleverna kan arbeta med på ett fokuserat sätt. En stor del av forskningen behandlar sådana arbetssätt och det finns flera tänkba­ra skäl till att de i många fall ger goda resultat. Dels kan det vara lättare att konstruera bra digitala lärresurser om man begränsar sig till ett mindre omfattande matematikin­nehåll, dels kan det vara lättare för både lärare och elever att lära sig att använda den sortens lärresurser. Genomgången tyder vidare på att det av forskningstekniska skäl är lättare att uppnå tydliga effekter vid den här sortens upplägg.

När ett relativt smalt matematikinnehåll behandlas är det i allmänhet valt på ett genomtänkt sätt, exempelvis kan det handla om steg i matematikutvecklingen som är vedertaget problematiska. Ofta talar man om så kallade tröskelbegrepp – matematiska begrepp som eleverna behöver förstå för att kunna utvecklas vidare inom ett område. Exempel på tröskelbegrepp som berörs i underlaget är bråk och funktioner.

Varierade sätt att uppleva, erfara och kommunicera matematik

Det förefaller vara positivt för elevers kunskapsutveckling om de digitala lärresurser­na möjliggör att eleverna kan uppleva och urskilja matematiska begrepp och proces­ser visuellt och dynamiskt. Det kan exempelvis uppnås genom att använda digitala geometriska objekt för att ge elever rika och varierade upplevelser av geometriska egenskaper. Det verkar vidare vara bra om lärresurserna är konstruerade på ett sätt som uppmuntrar till att elever samtalar om matematikupplevelserna med varandra och med lärare. Det kan åstadkommas såväl med digitala lärresurser för samarbetsin­riktade arbetssätt som med digitala lärresurser för självständigt arbete.

Med undantag för kurspaket kan de flesta typer av digitala lärresurser fungera bra

Digitala kurspaket har i allmänhet studerats i stora elevgrupper under lång tid, till exem­pel en hel årskurs. Man kan säga att dessa studier utgör en slags motpol till studier med ett avgränsat matematikinnehåll. Även resultatmässigt är kontrasten stor; kurspaketen tycks i de allra flesta fall inte innebära några betydelsefulla vinster för kunskapsutveck­lingen. Möjligen är kurspaketens enskilda delar inte lika bra som lärresurser med ett mer avgränsat ämnesinnehåll, eller så innefattar de både gynnsamma och ogynnsamma enskilda delar som medför att effekterna tar ut varandra.

En nackdel med studierna av digitala kurspaket är att det kan vara svårt att säker­ställa i vilken utsträckning lärresurserna verkligen har använts så som det var tänkt. Samtidigt är det en fördel att studierna avspeglar vad som kan förväntas när omfattande digitala lärresurser används under lång tid i stora grupper. En tänkbar bidragande förklaring till att kurspaketen vanligen innebär små vinster – om några – är att det kan vara en större utmaning att förändra matematikundervisningen så att den generellt tar stöd i digitala lärresurser.

Med undantag för kurspaketen har vi inte funnit stöd för att någon kategori av digitala lärresurser sticker ut när det gäller effekter på elevers matematikkunskaper. Det går att nå goda resultat med såväl uppgifter och objekt som spel och verktyg. Digitala verktyg har dock undersökts i endast två studier, båda på gymnasienivå. Det är i sig ett viktigt resultat att så få studier behandlar digitala verktyg i matematikunder­visningen.

Lärarens roll och arbete är centralt

Lärarens roll och arbete kan skilja sig beroende på utformningen av och syftet med en viss digital lärresurs. Medan vissa lärresurser är tänkta att i huvudsak erbjuda eleverna självständiga matematikaktiviteter, förutsätter andra att läraren själv hanterar den digitala lärresursen. Genomgången visar att det går att nå bra effekter på elevernas matematikkunskaper i båda fallen.

Digitala lärresurser för självständigt arbete kan vara ett kompletterande stöd i un­dervisningen och på så sätt möjliggöra att lärare kan ägna mer tid och kraft åt andra aspekter av undervisningen. Det gör att resultatet blir mer beroende av lärresursen i sig, snarare än på interaktionen med övrig undervisning. Om lärresurserna erbju­der individanpassad vägledning kan det skapa särskilt goda förutsättningar för elevernas kunskapsutveckling. Men även när digitala lärresurser för självständigt arbete används verkar det vara särskilt gynnsamt om de används på ett integrerat sätt till­sammans med annan undervisning. Det är helt jämförbart med hur andra resurser för lärande i allmänhet kan användas. Exempelvis kan en digital lärresurs användas för att ge eleverna vissa typer av erfarenheter som sedan också behandlas inom den lärarledda undervisningen. Digitala lärresurser för självständigt arbete är vanligare i årskurser till och med mellanstadiet.

Arbetssätt med digitala lärresurser som innebär en hög grad av aktiv lärarmedver­kan eller som är tekniskt komplexa kräver oftast att lärarna först får möjlighet att utbilda sig i hur lärresurserna fungerar och vad som kan göras med stöd av dem. I dessa fall behöver man beakta länken mellan lärresurserna, undervisningens upplägg i övrigt och innehållet i kompetensutvecklingen. Det är tänkbart att de digitala lärresurser som i sig kräver en högre lärarinvolvering också ger bra förutsättningar för att skapa en sådan länkning. Samtidigt krävs då också mer av läraren. För den här sortens lärresurser blir det avgörande för resultatet vad läraren själv väljer att göra med lärresurserna tillsam­mans med sina elever.

Urval av forskning

Av nära 10 000 publikationer som identifierades i litteratursökningen har vi gått igenom drygt 700 studier i fulltext. Av dessa bedömdes totalt 85 studier kunna bidra till att besvara den systematiska översiktens frågor, varav 75 avser grund-och gymnasieskolan och 10 avser förskolan. I denna rapport redovisas resultaten från de 75 studier som avser grund-och gymnasieskolan.

Alla studierna är kontrollerade experiment, vilket innebär att forskarna har jäm­fört två eller flera undervisningsinsatser med varandra. Alla studier mäter också i vilken grad elevers kunskaper i matematik påverkas av undervisningen. Undervisnin­gen med digitala lärresurser som har undersökts är i alla studier upplagd på ett sätt som syftar till att passa förskole-eller skolmatematiken. Det betyder bland annat att undervisningen behandlar matematikinnehåll som valts på ett medvetet sätt i relation till en viss målgrupp.

De allra flesta digitala lärresurser som har studerats finns inte på svenska. Flertalet är inte heller öppet tillgängliga. Även om detta medför att lärresurserna oftast inte kan användas direkt i ett svenskt sammanhang ger översikten kunskap om hur digitala lärre­surser kan se ut till innehåll och funktion samt hur de kan användas i undervisningen för att ge effekter på kunskapsutvecklingen i matematik.

This paper presents initial attempts to combine a humanoid robot with the teachable agent approach. Several design choices are discussed, including the decision to use a robot instead of a virtual agent and which behaviours to implement in the robot. A pilot study explored how the interaction with a robot seemed to influence children’s engagement as well as their attribution of mental states to a robot and to a virtual agent. Eight children participated and the interaction was measured via an observational protocol and a conversational interview. A main outcome was large individual differences between the children’s interaction with the robot compared to the virtual agent.

Abstract Educational software based on teachable agents has repeatedly proven to have positive effects on students’ learning outcomes. The strongest effects have been shown for low-performers. A number of mechanisms have been proposed to explore this outcome, in particular mechanisms that involve attributions of social agency to teachable agents. Our study examined whether an expression of high versus low self-efficacy in a teachable agent would affect low-performing students with respect to their learning outcomes and with respect to a potential change in their own self-efficacy. The learning domain was mathematics, specifically the base-ten system. Results were that the learning outcomes of low-performers who taught a low self-efficacy agent were significantly better than the learning outcomes of low-performers who taught a high self-efficacy agent. There were no effects from the manipulation of self-efficacy expressed by the teachable agent on changes of the low-performing students’ own self-efficacy.

Previous work indicates that physical robots elicit more favorable social responses than virtual agents. These effects have been attributed to the physical embodiment. However, a recent meta-analysis by Li [1] suggests that the benefits of robots are due to physical presence rather than physical embodiment. To further explore the importance of presence we conducted a pilot study investigating the relationship between physical and social presence. The results suggest that social presence of an artificial agent is important for interaction with people, and that the extent to which it is perceived as socially present might be unaffected by whether it is physically or virtually present.

Educational software in the form of games or so called "computer assisted intervention" for young children has become increasingly common receiving a growing interest and support. Currently there are, for instance, more than 1,000 iPad apps tagged for preschool. Thus, it has become increasingly important to empirically investigate whether these kinds of software actually provide educational benefits for such young children. The study presented in the present article investigated whether preschoolers have the cognitive capabilities necessary to benefit from a teachable-agent-based game of which pedagogical benefits have been shown for older children. The role of executive functions in childrens attention was explored by letting 36 preschoolers (3;9-6;3 years) play a teachable-agent-based educational game and measure their capabilities to maintain focus on pedagogically relevant screen events in the presence of competing visual stimuli. Even though the participants did not succeed very well in an inhibition pretest, results showed that they nonetheless managed to inhibit distractions during game-play. It is suggested that the game context acts as a motivator that scaffolds more mature cognitive capabilities in young children than they exhibit during a noncontextual standardized test. The results further indicate gender differences in the development of these capabilities.

Hakkarainen and Sintonen (2002) praise the descriptive adequacy of Hintikka's Interrogative Model of Inquiry (imi) to describe children's practices in an inquiry-based learning context. They further propose to use the imi as a starting point for developing new pedagogical methods and designing new didactic tools. We assess this proposal in the light of the formal results that in the imi characterize interrogative learning strategies. We nd that these results actually reveal a deep methodological issue for inquiry-based learning, namely that educators cannot guarantee that learners will successfully acquire a content, without limiting learner's autonomy, and that a trade-off between success and autonomy is unavoidable. As a by-product of our argument, we obtain a logical characterization of serendipity.

In three quasi-experimental studies, we investigated the effects of placing a Teachable Agent (TA) from a math game in a digital summative test. We hypothesized that the TA would affect test performance, even without actual "teachability", by social influence on the test situation. In Study 1 (N=47), students did a pretest, played the math game for seven weeks, and did a posttest either with or without the TA. In Study 2 (N=62), students did not play the game but were introduced to a TA directly in the posttest. In Study 3 (N=165), the game included a social chat with the TA, and the posttest offered a choice of more difficult questions. Results showed significant effects of the TA on choice and performance on conceptual math problems, though not on overall test scores. We conclude that experience with a TA can influence performance beyond interaction and informative feedback.

We describe a unique play-&-learn game for early math, designed to provide adaptive instruction with respect to support and challenge as well as to cater for an inclusive pedagogy where no child, whether far behind or far ahead, is exposed as being "different".

There is substantial evidence that preschooler' performance in early math is highly correlated to math performance throughout school as well as academic skills in general. One way to help children attain early math skills is by using targeted educational software and the paper discusses potential gains of using such software to support early math development. Furthermore it is argued that the content of early math software should be centered around notions such as number sense and spontaneous focus on numerosity. Beyond that, the paper argues for seven design criteria to consider if the goal is to provide strong support for early math via educational software: (1) use a pedagogical approach clearly based on research on early learning of mathematics, (2) provide a set of relevant representations in an appropriate order, (3) provide informative and meaningful feedback, (4) pay attention to motivational aspects for the age group, (5) provide individually adapted support as well as challenge, (6) include a reporting function for educators, and (7) enable the use of an inclusive pedagogy. These seven design criteria are described and illustrated by concrete examples drawn from a newly developed play-&-learn game in early math: Magical Garden.

The current study investigated if and how students’ behaviour when using a teachable agent-based educational software were related to their working memory capacity. Thirty Swedish students aged 11–12, participated in the study. Results showed that differences in behaviour such as time spent on an off-task activity, time spent on interactive dialogues, and the number of tests that students let their TA take, were associated with differences in working memory capacity. 

This paper explores how users ascribe gender to a visually androgynous teachable agent, and if and how the ascribed gender can influence the perceived personality characteristics of the agent. Previous studies have shown positive effects of using agents with more neutral or androgynous appearances, for instance, a more gender neutral agent evoked more positive attitudes on females than did a more stereotypical female agent [1] and androgynous agents were less abused than female agents [2]. Another study showed that even though an agent was visually androgynous, the user typically ascribed a gender to it [3].

Det finns två huvudsakliga svar på frågan varför forskning och utveckling, F&U, i området digitala läromedel är viktig. Det första är relativt uppenbart: Det produceras idag allt fler digitala läromedel som används i ökad utsträckning i skolan. För att kunna ta fram digitala läromedel av hög kvalitet krävs forskning och utveckling. Det andra och mindre uppenbara svaret är att digitala läromedel också kan fungera som forskningsinstrument och ge nya kunskaper och insikter om lärande och lärprocesser. I detta kapitel utvecklar vi, med hjälp av konkreta illustrationer från andras och egna F&U-projekt, dessa två svar.

Digitala system för pedagogisk bedömning öppnar nya möjligheter som inte finns med papper och penna. Dessutom frigörs tid för lärarna. Vi ber därför Skolverket att tillsätta en bred arbetsgrupp för att utveckla ett digitalt system för nationella prov.

This paper explores the potentials of a new type of pedagogical agent – a Challenger Teachable Agent. The aim of such a pedagogical agent is to increase engagement and motivation, and challenge students into deeper learning and metacognitive reasoning. It is based on the successful implementation of the Learning by Teaching approach in Teachable Agents, and in addition it draws on previous work that has shown the potential of resistance or challenge as means to improve learning. In this paper we discuss how these two bases can be combined and realized through new types of behaviours in a Teachable Agent

This chapter presents the first steps towards a new type of pedagogical agent – a Challenger Teachable Agent, CTA. The overall aim of introducing a CTA is to increase engagement and motivation and challenge students into deeper learning and metacognitive reasoning. The paper discusses desired design features of such an agent on the basis of related work and results from a study where 11-year old students interacted with a first version of a CTA in the framework of an educational software for history. The focus is on how students respond when the CTA disagrees and questions their suggestions, and how groups of students, differing in response behavior and in self-efficacy, experience the CTA.

Närmare sextio studenter från Humanistiska fakulteten ochLTH har jobbat intensivt i blandade grupper under höstterminen. I universitetets äldsta byggnad Kungshuset visade de strax före jul upp sina resultat, samtliga nära kopplade till spjutspetsforskning inom teknik och lärande.

Studenterna har gjort filmer som t.ex. visar på nya sätt att lära sig matte och historia, eller hur man med hjälp av virtuella 3D-figurer kan utforska kroppsspråkets betydelse för mänskligt tänkande. Kursdeltagarna är i kognitionsvetenskap eller går sista åren på ingenjörsutbildningen. Men det är inte bara det tvärvetenskapliga upplägget som gör kurserna speciella. Det handlar också om att man arbetar med verkliga problem, sådana som forskare själva försöker lösa. Studenterna jobbar i absoluta forskningsfronten – det finns inget facit.

We report a study on student’s attitudes to a visually androgynous in comparison to a male and a female Teachable Agent (TA). Results were that overall the androgynous agent was preferred over the female and male agents. A visually androgynous agent does not embody categorical gender attributes. At the same time it does not have to be genderless but instead represent both maleness and femaleness so that students can chose for themselves. Androgyny, in this sense, is potentially a way to have femaleness and maleness represented, with corresponding educational benefits such as role modelling and identification, without risking negative reinforcement of gender stereotypes

Skolan kombinerar idéer om 2000-talets kunskaper med 1900-talets former av tester och utvärderingar. Sammanblandningen är dömd att misslyckas.

This study explored if the visual gender representations (androgynous, male, or female) of an embodied agent would influence students’ perceptions of their agent and their attitudes toward the agent as their conversational partner. The study also explored if students’ gender and cultural background would interact with the agent’s visual gender to influence their perceptions and attitudes. Participants were 208 early-teen students sampled from US and South Korea. The results revealed that student gender was a significant factor for influencing students' perceptions and attitudes and that the students showed positive attitudes toward an androgynous agent more than toward a gendered agent (either male or female).

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of speech rate on children' performance on a widely used language comprehension test, the Test for Reception of Grammar, version 2 (TROG 2), and to explore how test performance interacts with task difficulty and with the child' working memory capacity. Participants were 102 typically developing Swedish-speaking children randomly assigned to one of the three conditions; the TROG 2 sentences spoken by a speech-language pathologist with slow, normal or fast speech rate. Results showed that the fast speech rate had a negative effect on the TROG 2 scores and that slow rate was more beneficial in general. However, for more difficult tasks the beneficial effect of slow speech was only pronounced for children with better scores on a working memory task. Our interpretation is that slow speech is particularly helpful when children do not yet fully master a task but are just about to grasp it. Our results emphasise the necessity of careful considerations of the role dynamic aspects of examiner' speech might play in test administration and favour digitalised procedures in standardised language comprehension assessment.

This paper presents an educational game in mathematics based on an apprenticeship model using a teachable agent, as well as an evaluative study of how the game affects (i) conceptual understanding and (ii) attitudes towards mathematics. In addition we discuss how collaborative and competitive affordances of the game may affect understanding and motivation. 19 students played the game in pairs once a week during a math lesson for seven weeks (the game-playing group) while another 19 students followed the regular curriculum (the control group). Math comprehension scores increased significantly for the game-playing group but not the control group (p < .05). However, there was no significant difference in attitude change between the two groups.

Post hoc analyses indicated that game-playing primarily affected students’ confidence in explaining math to a peer, but not their enjoyment of doing so. Collaborative and competitive activities seem to carry a strong motivational influence for students to play the game.

Ta några ingenjörsstudenter, släng in ett par kognitionsvetarstudenter och ge dem ett problem att lösa. Ut kommer interaktiva dataspel för skolan och robotar som kan imitera människors rörelser.

– Vi kombinerar doing och thinking, säger Agneta Gulz, professor i kognitionsvetenskap.

Previous studies have shown that female ECAs are more likely to be abused than male agents, which may cement gender stereotypes. In the study reported in this paper a visually androgynous ECA in the form of a teachable agent in an educational math game was compared with a female and male agent. The results confirm that female agents are more prone to be verbally abused than male agents, but also show that the visually androgynous agent was less abused than the female although more than the male agent. A surprising finding was that very few students asked the visually androgynous agent whether it was a boy or a girl. These results suggest that androgyny may be a way to keep both genders represented, which is especially important in pedagogical settings, simultaneously lowering the abusive behavior and perhaps most important, loosen the connection between gender and abuse.

A teachable-agent arithmetic game is presented and evaluated in terms of student performance, attitude and self-efficacy. An experimental pre-post study design was used, enrolling 153 3^rd and 5^th grade students in Sweden. The playing group showed significantly larger gains in math performance and self-efficacy beliefs, but not in general attitude towards math, than the control groups. The contributions in relation to previous work include a new educational game being evaluated, and an emphasis on self-efficacy in the study as a strong predictor of math achievements.

This chapter discusses design challenges encountered when developing a conversational pedagogical agent. By tracing the historical roots of pedagogical agents in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), we discern central developments in creating an agent that is both knowledgeable and fosters a social relationship with the learner. Main challenges faced when attempting to develop a pedagogical agent of this kind relate to: i) learners’ expectations on the agent’s knowledge and social profile, ii) dealing with learners’ engagement in off-task conversation and iii) managing potential abuse of the agent. We discuss these challenges and possible ways to address them, with reference to an ongoing Research & Development project, and with a focus on the design of a pedagogical agent’s visual embodiment and its conversational capabilities.

The paper discusses the addition of off-task socially oriented conver-sational abilities to an existing “teachable agent” (TA) in an educational game in mathematics. The purpose of this extension is to affect constructs known to promote learning, such as self-efficacy and engagement as well as enhance students’ experiences of interacting with the game. A comparison of students that played the game with the off-task interaction to those who played without it, shows trends that indicate that students who played the game with off-task interaction had a more positive experience of the game, and that they also learnt more, as reflected in the learning outcomes of their TAs.

The article reports and discusses a long-term qualitative study of forty 8-10 year old students who regularly played a math game during math lessons for 9 weeks. The goal was to explore the relations between (i) some of the pedagogical principles that underlie the game and (ii) the playing practice in terms of what actually takes place when students play the math game during regular math lessons. The article discusses indications of matches and mismatches between pedagogical principles and playing practice as they appear in analyses of observations and video recordings.

The result highlights the difficulty of predicting areas in which possible mismatches appear between the intentions of the pedagogues and designers of educational technology, and the actual use of the technology by the students. This also applies to educational materials that have already been pilot tested and used on a smaller scale. We emphasize the need to observe actual use for extensive periods of time, i.e. to go beyond short-time user testing.

A previous study compared two student groups that played a mathematics game based on a teachable agent. One group played with, and the other without, the inclusion of a social conversation module: a chat between the student and the teachable agent. Results were that students who used the game with the chat included had a more positive experience of the game and learned more in the sense of teaching their agent better. However, patterns dif­fered between sub-groups of students. Low-achievers did not prefer the game with the chat included, whereas high- and mid-achievers did, but simultaneously low-achievers tended to chat more. Low-achievers tended not to use the options of not starting the chat or quitting a chat beforehand as much as high- and mid-achievers did. In this paper we pursue a more de­tailed analysis of the students’ conversational behavior in the chat. The analytic focus is on the notion of engagement. Results point towards differences between the student groups in their engagement in the off-task conversation, that in turn can help explain the previous somewhat paradoxical result.

The paper discusses the motivation for and outcome of the addition of socially oriented so called “off-task” conversational abilities to an existing “teachable agent” (TA) in an educational mathematics game. The purpose of the extension is to affect constructs known to promote learning, such as self-efficacy and engagement, as well as enhancing students’ experiences of the game. A comparison of students that played the educational game with the off-task interaction included to those who played without it, indicate that the former had a more positive experience of the game, and that they also learnt more in the sense of teaching their TA better. The potential for pedagogical interventions in this and similar systems is discussed as well as differences found between high- and low-achievers.

The paper discusses some cultural considerations that we stand before in developing and exploiting an agent based educational software for use by Swedish and American students, age 11-14. The reported cultural challenges arise in software develop­ment, study designs, and decisions on actual pedagogical use in the two cultural settings.

The present study examined whether socio-motivational effects from working with a Teachable Agent (TA) might transfer from the formative learning phase to a summative test situation. Forty-nine students (9-10 years old) performed a digital pretest of math skills, then played a TA-based educational math game in school over a period of eight weeks. Thereafter, the students were divided into two groups, matched according to their pretest scores, and randomly assigned one of two posttest conditions: either with the TA present, or without the TA. Results showed that low-performers on the pretest improved significantly more on the posttest than did high-performers, but only when tested with the TA. We reason that low-performers might be more susceptible to a supportive social context – as provided by their TA – for performing well in a test situation.