Samuel Alexander

Citation

Thesis Title
An Affect-Sensitive Intelligent Tutoring system with an Animated Pedagogical Agent that Adapts to Student Emothion like a Human Tutor.

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Mr Alexander''sresearch focussed on the effects of student and tutor emotion in educational software. He first carried out an observational study of interactions between students and human tutors, using facial expressions as a measure of their emotional state. The data from this study was then used to develop an artificial intelligence method for adapting to student emotions in software tutoring systems. A mathematics tutoring system for primary school students was developed that applied this method for adapting to student emotions; the system featured an animated tutoring character, Eve, who is able to detect facial expressions of student emotion using a web-cam, and can respond with her own expressions of emotion. The system was tested in local primary schools. His results showed evidence that enhancing educational software with emotional awareness can increase levels of student motivation and learning.

Supervisors
Associate Professor Abdolhossein Sarrafzadeh
Associate Professor Stephen Hill