Evaluating the persona effect of an interface agent in a tutoring system

Abstract This paper describes the evaluation of the persona effect of a speech‐driven anthropomorphic agent that has been embodied in the interface of an intelligent tutoring system (ITS). This agent is responsible for guiding the student in the environment and communicating the system's feedback messages. The agent was evaluated in terms of the effect that it could have on students' learning, behaviour and experience. The participants in the experiment were divided into two groups: half of them worked with a version of the ITS which embodied the agent and the rest worked with an agent‐less version. The results from this study confirm the hypothesis that a pedagogical agent incorporated in an ITS can enhance students' learning experience. On the other hand, the hypothesis that the presence of the agent improves short‐term learning effects was rejected.