Effects Of Pedagogical Agents’ Instructional Roles On Learners With Different Cognitive Styles In Terms Of Achievement And Motivation
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Date
2010-05
Authors
Foo, Kok Keong
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This study investigated the effects of pedagogical agents‟ instructional roles in an interactive agent-based multimedia learning environment on learners with different cognitive styles in terms of achievement and motivation.
Two modes of pedagogical agent with different instructional roles, namely, the Expert Agent (EXA) and the Mentor Agent (MEA), were systematically designed and developed to serve the purpose of this study. The EXA was designed to present direct and accurate information when questions were asked by the learners. Whereas the MEA was designed to provide sufficient guidance for learners to search for information, rather than giving the information directly when questions were asked by the learners. Occasionally, the MEA would provide words of motivation and encouragement to the learners to engage their involvement towards the learning task.
This true-experimental study employed a 2 x 2 factorial design by taking the two modes of pedagogical agent with different instructional roles (EXA and MEA) as the independent variable, and the learners‟ cognitive styles of field-dependence/field-independence (FD/FI) as the moderator variable. The dependent variables were the learners‟ achievement score and motivation score. A total of 86 fourth-year undergraduate students from the School of Educational Studies Universiti Sains Malaysia, who enrolled in the „PGT436E: ICT in Education‟ course, participated in this study as the research sample. The learners were randomly assigned to one of the pedagogical agents (EXA or MEA) and were requested to study the instructional materials provided in the agent-based multimedia learning portal by interacting with their assigned pedagogical agent.
Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed to analyse the collected data. The analyses revealed that learners who were facilitated by the MEA performed significantly better compared to those who were facilitated by the EXA in both achievement and motivation. When the learners‟ cognitive styles were taken into consideration, the greatest impact of the MEA was observed on the FD learners – whereby FD learners who used the MEA outperformed those FD learners who used the EXA significantly in both achievement and motivation. Among the FI learners, learners who used the MEA were significantly more motivated compared to those who used the EXA. But, no significance difference was identified in the mean of achievement score between the learners who used the MEA and the learners who used the EXA. These results implied that the mentor instructional role is preferable over the expert instructional role when designing pedagogical agents for multimedia learning environments.
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Keywords
Multimedia learning environment on learners , with different cognitive styles