Thesis Proposal: Iris Howley
When
-
Where
GHC 2109
Description
THESIS PROPOSAL
Leveraging Educational Technology to Overcome Social Obstacles to Help-Seeking and Learning
Iris Howley
COMMITTEE
Carolyn Penstein Rosé (Chair), Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Robert Kraut, Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Vincent Aleven, Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Marsha Lovett, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology
Stuart Karabenick, University of Michigan, School of Education
DOCUMENT
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ihowley/ihowley_proposal.pdf
ABSTRACT
Educational technology can be used not only to automatically monitor and tailor students’ cognitive progress through lessons, but also to reduce threats to public self-esteem and the need for autonomy. People respond to computers and technology as if they are social beings, suggesting that we can design the social features of our intelligent tutoring systems to elicit social responses beneficial to help-seeking and learning.
This proposal builds on previous work exploring the social presence of human and robotic pedagogical agents, their perceived social roles (teacher or helper), and their impact on learning in one-on-one tutoring situations.
In this talk, I propose additional experiments examining the practical implications of social presence and role of pedagogical dialogue agents as well as examining the causal mechanism of public threat to self-esteem. My work attempts to answer the questions: (1) Can we increase learner help-seeking by reducing the social presence of our educational technology? (2) Is threat to public self-esteem the causal mechanism behind this change in behavior? and (3) How does it relate to threats to student autonomy?