Face to face interaction with an intelligent virtual agent: The effect on learning tactical picture compilation

Learning a process control task, such as tactical picture compilation in the Navy, is difficult, because the students have to spend their limited cognitive resources both on the complex task itself and the act of learning. In addition to the resource limits, motivation can be reduced when learning progress is slow. Intelligent Virtual Agents may help to improve tutoring systems by offering a student feedback on their performance via speech and facial expression, which imposes limited "communication load" and motivating ways of interaction. We present our Intelligent Virtual Agent, called Ashley, and an experiment in which we examined whether learning of tactical picture compilation is better when the feedback is provided by Ashley compared to a standard text-box interface. This first experiment did not show user interface effects, but provided new requirements for the next version of the feedback system and Ashley: The task to learn was yet too simple for substantial feedback effects, and the timing of Ashley's feedback should be improved, and Ashley's presence should be better scheduled. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.