Field Experiment with an Animated Intelligent Tutor in Portugal

Abstract

This paper describes the results of a pedagogical experiment using an Intelligent Tutoring System that also implements an Animated Pedagogical Agent. The study was performed in Portugal, as an attempt to replicate some experiments performed in the USA, and in order to verify the usefulness of the Pedagogical Agent in a different country with distinct culture. After running the experiment and analyzing the data, we have concluded that in our specific case, we did not find any evidence that the pedagogical agent could boost instructional outcomes of students in Portugal. Our data is showing no statistically significant differences between the control, and experimental groups. Additionally, we have also found that the control group actually performed slightly better than the experimental group. As a result, our study is giving some good evidences that a Pedagogical Agent that was developed, tested and successfully used in one country, may not be successful when used in a different country.