Abstract:

With regards to the affective domain, learning is necessarily related to the issue of how to persuade learners to have right attitude toward a given subject. Persuasion is the activity of attempting to change attitude or behaviors through symbolic interaction, without coercion or deception.
Traditionally, persuasion in learning should be occurred between human instructors and learners; however, today computer technology is designed to apply traditional human techniques of persuasion, to extend the reach of humans as interactive persuaders. In the human-computer interaction, various multimedia elements are incorporated and can be the main sources of persuasion.
In some ways, persuasion through computer technology can be more effective than human agents’ persuasion. The power of social factors during delivering persuasive message is amplified through interactive computing systems. Persuasive computer technologies can effectively deliver the targeted messages in order to change learners’ thoughts, feelings, and actions.
In particular, pedagogical agent, human-like multimedia element, can be effective to deliver intentionally designed instructional materials. Often people are influenced not by information itself but by how it’s presented; this is the issue of the modality. Pedagogical agents are very persuasive because they can be designed to use various aspects of modality, in particular, by incorporating the effect of voice and visual figures.
In this study, the instruction about intellectual property was designed and delivered for 237 college students. The instruction was intended to inform what would be right and wrong regarding 6 different situations on intellectural property, encourage students to make right decision, and change their attitude toward the issue of intellectural property.
This study employed a 22 factorial design, with deictic gestures (presence, absence), and facial expressions (presence, absence) of pedagogical agents as the two factors. The participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and participated as a required course activity. After the students learned about intellectural property through the instruction delivered by pedagogical agents, they answered 30 questions survey. For data analysis, MANOVA was conducted.
The results of analysis presented that the students learned more and tended to make right decision when pedagogical agents had facial expressions, with regardless of the positiveness or negativeness of expressions. In particular, negative expression could be also effective with appropriate message. By the way, the participants were not influenced by deitic gestures. This study showed that pedagogical agents as multimedia computing elements could be effective in persuasion when they had affective expressions matching with appropriate messages.

Keywords:

Persuasion, affective domain, pedagogical agent.