1. Does what happens in VR stay in VR? Daniel L. Schwartz Stanford University

2. LIFE emphasizes the social basis of learning.

3. Pat Kuhl U. Washington

4. Natural Question  Is it the social aspect of the interaction?  Or, is it the contingent aspect of the interaction?  Conducted a more controlled study with adults in immersive virtual reality (VR). A “mere belief” manipulation. Kept all interactions identical.

5. Mere Belief of Social flow of exchange (9 times). VR World Reappears. Read Question Click button to let agent know it can respond. Agent Answers Listen quietly Blue Screen To bring arousal back to baseline Blue Screen Prepare for next question Experimental Manipulation: Avatar condition – told the character is person you met. Agent condition – told the character is the computer. 5 Sandra Okita Teachers College

6. Procedures.  College students.  Read a brief passage on the causes of fever.  Played “Operation” with confederate.  Into VR - told confederate (avatar) or computer (agent)  Read aloud questions relevant to fever passage. Questions shown on a screen in VR. “Why do your hands and feet get cold during a fever?”  Character answered after each question. Answers were neither right nor wrong  Left VR and took a posttest. 6

7. Score if only repeated character’s answers Posttest Score

8. Arousal in VR on questions people did well or poorly on posttest.

9. Avatar-Silent Condition (social but no interaction) Blue Screen To bring arousal back to baseline Read Question Silently “Alyssa is reading same question.” Agent Answers Listen quietly Blue Screen Prepare for next question Remove social action.

11. Summary  Began with wrong question: Social OR Interaction.  Correct answer was: Social AND Interaction.  Social + Interaction increased arousal and learning. Arousal correlated with learning.  LIFE checking arousal story. Internal reward centers “turned up” in social exchange.

12. How do we bring this to classroom technology?  Bad approaches: We lie and tell the kids the computer is a person. We avoid all non-social uses of computers.  A better approach: Social is a frame of mind.  After all in the VR study, it was always a computer. Have students adopt a social frame of mind.

13. Teachable Agents (TA) Students learn by adopting and teaching a computer agent. Gautam Biswas (Vanderbilt)

14. Teaching Your Agent 1 2 4 5 3 ? ? ? ?

15. You asked me: if methane increases, what happens to heat radiation? I think that if methane increases, heat radiation decreases. This is the path that I followed to get my answer. Click explain to hear more. Understanding Your TA methane heat radiation ? I think that if methane increases, heat radiation decreases. This is the path I followed to get my answer.

16. Larger Environment

17. Gameshow Bridges Formal and Informal (Homework) Your agent answers. You wager on how you think your agent will do. Host asks questions

18. Does it work?  Teach agent v. self. 50 8 th -graders. “Mere belief” manipulation. Identical software.  Teach condition learns better. Low achiever boost.  Students work harder to learn for their agent than self. Double reading time! Self Teach Cathy Chase Stanford

19. Now what?  Do we leave kids in technology environment all the time? Byron Reeves said life will be in technology, so why not?  Not quire ready to accept this argument.  Do students become too dependent on the technology?  Calculators and math, word processors and spelling.  Does technology displace the value of original curriculum?  One way to answer these later two questions: Show that students learn better from their lessons after using the technology.

20. Does technology help or hurt learning in the long run? Cohort 1 Cohort 2 With TA No TA ~150 Children and 6 Teachers 6 th -grade science All teachers used the same science kits. (FOSS). Half of teachers also used TA’s as they wished. Same total time overall. Doris Chin Stanford

21. Performance on FOSS kit’s own tests. (Is there added value without detracting from FOSS?) Kit + TAKit Only What WhyHow Data Question Type Average FOSS Item Score (0-1)

22. Effects on Researcher Designed Measures Kit + TA Kit Only Kit + TA

23. Did TA Prepare Students to Learn without the Technology? Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Using TA No TA CROSS OVER Stop TA Start TA

24. Prepared for Future Learning Kit + TA Kit Only Kit + TA

25. Conclusion  Does what happen in VR stay in VR? (Jeremy Bailenson wants all kids to wear VR in class.) No: Results reaching out to learning theory and school applications.  Ditto for learning technology. Agents prepared students to learn better without technology.  Thank you! For more details, go to to download:  Teachable Agents and the protégé effect.  Preparation for future learning with Teachable Agents.  The mere belief of social interaction improves learning.

26. Neural Correlates 26