Animated Pedagogical Agents to Assist Learners and to keep them motivated on Online Learning Environments (LMS or MOOC)

This paper gives an overview of the first specifications of current research on an animated pedagogical agent to assist learners and to keep them motivate on an online learning environment (LMS or MOOC). It combines characteristics of intelligent agents like: autonomy, ability to perceive, to interact, to reason and to act; and some other characteristics of pedagogical agents as: observing, evaluating, adapting content, recommending, engaging, motivating, etc. The design of this agent is based on a new concept which we have called the Pedagogical Intervention. An intervention may be of different kinds, but it is more precisely used to overcome the current problem of abandonment of learners. We therefore propose to show, through this paper which is a summary of our recent work, the interest and importance of the analysis of the limitations of the online learning environments, in particular the causes of the drop-out problem in order to define adapted pedagogical interventions strategies.