Recent years have witnessed the birth of a new paradigm for learning environments: animated pedagogical agents. These lifelike autonomous characters cohabit learning environments with students to create rich, face-to-face learning interactions. This opens up exciting new possibilities; for example, agents can demonstrate complex tasks, employ locomotion and gesture to focus students' attention on the most salient aspect of the task at hand, and convey emotional responses to the tutorial situation. Animated pedagogical agents offer great promise for broadening the bandwidth of tutorial communication and increasing learning environments' ability to engage and motivate students. This article sets forth the motivations behind animated pedagogical agents, describes the key capabilities they offer, and discusses the technical issues they raise. The discussion is illustrated with descriptions of a number of animated agents that represent the current state of the art.

Animated Pedagogical Agents: Face-to-Face Interaction in Interactive Learning Environments

An international comparison of technology adoption

http://www.diannecyr.com/cyr_head_ivanov2006_designaesthetics.pdf

Design aesthetics leading to m-loyalty in mobile commerce

The usefulness of mobile devices has increased greatly in recent years allowing users to perform more tasks in a mobile context. This increase in usefulness has come at the expense of the usability of these devices in some contexts. We conducted a small review of mobile usability models and found that usability is usually measured in terms of three attributes; effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Other attributes, such as cognitive load, tend to be overlooked in the usability models that are most prominent despite their likely impact on the success or failure of an application. To remedy this we introduces the PACMAD (People At the Centre of Mobile Application Development) usability model which was designed to address the limitations of existing usability models when applied to mobile devices. PACMAD brings together significant attributes from different usability models in order to create a more comprehensive model. None of the attributes that it includes are new, but the existing prominent usability models ignore one or more of them. This could lead to an incomplete usability evaluation. We performed a literature search to compile a collection of studies that evaluate mobile applications and then evaluated the studies using our model.

/pdf/usability-of-mobile-applications-literature-review-and-2sgkvggy18.pdf

Usability of mobile applications: literature review and rationale for a new usability model

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate human motivations affecting an adoption decision for smartphone among medical doctors and nurses.Design/methodology/approach – This study investigates smartphone users' perception based on users' perceived adoption under the self‐efficacy, technology acceptance model (TAM) and innovation attributes leading to an adoption attitude under innovation diffusion theory by providing research constructs for the domain of medical doctors and nurses, testing them with reliability and validity, and demonstrating their distinctiveness with hypothesis testing.Findings – The results indicate that behavioral intention to use was largely influenced by perceived usefulness (PU) and attitude toward using smartphone. PU and perceived ease of use positively determine attitude toward using smartphone.Research limitations/implications – For researchers, this study shows the possible and valuable adaptation of TAM constructs into the smartphone acceptance of doctors and nurs...

Acceptance and adoption of the innovative use of smartphone

The technology acceptance model (TAM) is one of the most widely used models of information technology (IT) adoption. According to TAM, IT adoption is influenced by two perceptions: usefulness and ease of use. In this study, we extend TAM to the mobile commerce context. We categorize the tasks performed on wireless handheld devices into three categories: (1) general tasks that do not involve transactions and gaming, (2) gaming tasks, and (3) transactional tasks. We propose a unified conceptual model for wireless technology adoption. In this model, task type moderates the effects of four possible determinants: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived playfulness, and perceived security. We postulate that, under the mobile context, user intention to perform general tasks that do not involve transactions and gaming is influenced by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, user intention to play games is affected by perceived playfulness, and user intention to transact is influenced by perceived usefulness and perceived security. A survey was conducted to collect data about user perception of 12 tasks that could be performed on wireless handheld devices and user intention to use wireless technology. Multiple regression analyses supported the proposed research model.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/40398799

Moderating Effects of Task Type on Wireless Technology Acceptance

This article reports on the development of an instrument designed to measure the enjoyment of computer game play. Despite the enormous technological progress in the field of computer games, enjoyment of computer game play is still not a well-defined construct. Based on Nabi and Krcmar's (2004) tripartite model of media enjoyment, a survey questionnaire was developed to measure computer game players' affective, behavioral, and cognitive reactions. Expert consultation, exploratory, and confirmatory card sorting sessions were used to refine the instrument. A survey of computer game players was subsequently conducted to test the instrument. Reliabilities and construct validities were analyzed. Findings and their implications were discussed.

Development of an Instrument to Measure Enjoyment of Computer Game Play

Humans are social creatures. Much of our intelligence derives from our ability to manipulate our environment through collaborative endeavors. Most extant computer programs and interfaces do little to take advantage of such manifestly human talents and interests, leaving broad avenues of human-computer communication unexplored. Although it is still considered controversial, there are many who believe the harnessing of social communication to be rich in possibilities for modern software. In this article, we look at a number of autonomous agent systems that embody their intelligence at least partially through the projection of a believable, engaging, synthetic persona. Among other topics, we touch briefly on samples of research that explore synthetic personality, representations of emotion, societies of fanciful and playful characters, intelligent and engaging automated tutors, and users projected as avatars into virtual worlds.

/pdf/autonomous-agents-as-synthetic-characters-4aor6sf5de.pdf

Autonomous Agents as Synthetic Characters

Story-morphing in the affective reasoning paradigm: generating stories semi-automatically for use with “emotionally intelligent” multimedia agents

This paper reports on the development of an instrument designed to measure the enjoyment of computer game play. Despite the enormous technological progress in the field of computer games, enjoyment of computer game play is still not a welldefined construct. Based on Nabi and Krcmar’s (2004) tripartite model of media enjoyment, a survey questionnaire was developed to measure computer game players’ affective, behavioral, and cognitive reactions. Expert consultation, exploratory and confirmatory card sorting sessions were used to refine the instrument. A survey of computer game players was subsequently conducted to test the instrument. Reliabilities and construct validities were analyzed. Findings and their implications were discussed.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1344&context=amcis2008

Jacek Brzezinski

Papers

Moderating Effects of Task Type on Wireless Technology Acceptance

Development of an Instrument to Measure Enjoyment of Computer Game Play

Autonomous Agents as Synthetic Characters

Story-morphing in the affective reasoning paradigm: generating stories semi-automatically for use with “emotionally intelligent” multimedia agents

Measuring Enjoyment of Computer Game Play