How Posh

http://www.gizmoz.com/file/q/1254057/12474297.wmv

Above is my avatar. I cannot, for the life of me get the video to post. I’ve been trying to for two days now. I give. You win avatar Erin. I actually “wasted” a lot of time playing with this. This was rather time consuming, but fun. I’m not gonna lie. I probably would have played with it all night (I mean wasted my time ☺) if I hadn’t other things to do. How can a person not like the ability to manipulate themselves in anyway they like? Make themselves posh, if you will, a rockstar..anything one could want. One’s avatar could appear just like them, not at all, perhaps how one wished they looked, or how they desire to be seen. There’s ownership, yet anonymity if desired. Worthwhile? To be explored.

Avatars, CAs, CPAs, virtual characters, whosits and whatsits, etc. You still with me? Hmmm. This is new to me and I have mixed feelings. The bodiless caricature as a learning assistant? Now I’m sure at some point we’ve all wanted a TA that is less idiosyncratic and more inorganic, but how does that go? You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes…you get what you need.

According to Doering et al, the findings of their experiment on the effectiveness of virtual characters as learning assistants helping students complete tasks is rather inconclusive. Oh! Other than the fact that there is no consensus as to whether or not they improve learning and teaching. I’ll get into CA abuse later. Apparently student performance didn’t improve necessarily, nonetheless among the usage of different agents. However..and seriously this should be common sense…students that received help from an agent via text turned audio versus written format produced higher scores. Well, duh. Give a kid options, I bet they’ll do better. And remember that Gardner guy with the multiple intelligences? Again, provide various opportunities for learning to occur and…now here’s the money word…differentiate those opportunities and you’re bound to see some success.

You know, I agree, the disembodied head, unnatural facial expressions, the animation, cartoon like appearance of a virtual assistant is downright creepy, and may take away from the learning process for these reasons alone. Who doesn’t benefit from a one on one personal, and I mean person-al experience..not a computer. That’s not personal..that’s a computer. I can’t help but think of that “I’m here to help” agent that pops up somewhere online on some website full of stuff you don’t need to buy. Her name is Annie or something similar. She has dark hair cut into a bob, and does exactly that with her pixilated head supposedly waiting there patiently to help you and only you with your order. Do you suppose this is the same “woman” on the other end of the telephone that is strangely enough also there to help you but can never quite hear you correctly..532 5th street…”let me see if I’ve got this correct…532 6th street”…no I said 5th street! If you’d like to speak to a representative, say representative now. REPRESENTATIVE. If only you had originally chosen menu option number 6 (that’s speak to a representative).

Problem? Doering et al claims they design these CAs to appear intelligent while in reality they are not…great…like I don’t deal with enough bright bulbs during the day, why not add another crayon to the box? It’s exactly that people: artificial intelligence. But they don’t have the necessary content knowledge to help, and they provide limited support at that. But hey, we don’t have enough manpower to do all the things that need to be done, so we must go somewhere right, we must find a way to compensate. Hi, I’m Annie, how can I help you? Engaging? Sure, it’s strange. Strange is always engaging.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the abuse. Veletsianos et al talks about these poor, innocent virtual characters being abused by students. Welcome to education. Nah, I kid. Kind of. But seriously, did they not know this was going to happen? Of course kids are going to ask inappropriate questions just to see what Annie is going to say, and what kinds of things they can get away with saying. Like you’re not going to say shit you’re not supposed to say to “someone” when you know you can’t really get in trouble. Here’s the double-edged sword part: kids can discuss anything and everything at length. Again, there’s an anonymity to it all..so why not say what’s on your mind, explicatives and all. Also, when these CAs cannot help, people tend to get frustrated bringing out attitude and cynicism in all parties. It’s not a perfect system, but show me a system that is.

Practice makes perfect, so I’ve been told. So perhaps with more research (ugh) and further development, these virtual peoples can be of more use to everyone and can be used for their intended purpose: to help aid in learning and teaching. The technology needs to be smarter, not just better.