Welcome to the Educational Technology Group!
Our research is a collaborative effort between departments of cognitive science, computer science, informatics, linguistics, design and media sciences from Swedish and North American univerisites with one mutual goal: to develop pedagogical tools based on empirical findings of the human mind.

Please feel free to browse around, or contact us if you have any questions.

Agneta Gulz, agneta.gulz@lucs.lu.se, Phone: +46 (0)46 222 32 69
Arne Jönsson, arne.jonsson@liu.se, Phone: +46 (0)13 28 17 17

Recent events

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The R&D (research and development) carried out by the Educational technology group has two goals.

The first is to develop and make use of educational technology systems to find out more about learning:

- What kinds of feedback work for which students?
- How do different students behave when they do not make progress?
- How do they make meaning of situations of non-progress and their own behaviour in these?
- Can thinking strategies in situations of non-progress be influenced by different pedagogical approaches?
- What role do variables like level of self-efficacy, goal orientation and gender have in a learning context?
- What is the interplay between motivation and accomplishments?
- What are the relations between on-task and off-task activities in learning contexts?

The second is to actually come up with educational technology systems with a real-world value as practical pedagogical tools, reflecting the knowledge we gained through our research.

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Our work can be divided in two main areas depending on the targets of the research as well as the systems/tools. The first area concerns the broad population of students (and teachers) within school, K-9. The second area, which represents a more novel strand in our work targets specific populations: children and young people with communicative and learning difficulties.

List of current and previous projects:

(2011-) Mobile Learning by Teaching (MoByTe). R&D project involving a novel kind of Teachable Agent architecture that allows a mesch of  rich experience-oriented interactions in different environments  with ii) processing of information more associated with traditional school learning, where a larger set of knowledge is put together and worked on in a focussed and reflective manner. Funded by Excellence Grant, Linköping University + Applying for additional funding.

(2009-2012) K2D2: Knowledge & Competence – Digital Dialogues. Within the Swedish Knowledge Foundation’s research programme “Young Net Cultures”. The math game used in the “Seeing and Talking Maths in Games” project is here extended into a more complex and multifaceted educational artefact by embodying the teachable agents and complementing the on-task dialogue with open social chat-related off-task dialogue. The project focuses on how the visual and social shaping of  digital pedagogical agents effect dialogue between students and characters in a chat. Possibilities for pedagogical interventions via the combination of knowledge oriented and socially oriented “digital dialogues” are explored. Involves researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, Lund University, Sweden, University West, Sweden and University of Texas, USA. Project partners: the e-strategy group at Natur & Kultur, Sweden, the organization CARDET and schools in Katrineholm, Linköping and Lund. Funded by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation (main funder) and Linköping University.

(2008-2011) Seeing and Talking Maths in Games. An international research project with three nodes: i) researchers and schools in Lund (where Gulz leads the activities), ii) researchers at University West, Trollhättan and schools in Uddevalla and Gothenburg, iii) researchers and schools in Stanford, USA. Students, age 7-12, use of an educational math game within their regular mathematics classes. Studies on the softwares’ effects on math understanding and on motivation are studied, together with models for implementation.The math game has been developed and is being further developed by researchers in the group. Funded by Wallenberg Global Learning Foundation.

(2007-2009) Choice Blindness: Trust in Virtual Reality. A comparative study of trust and confidence in digital contexts, departing from the phenomenon “choice blindness”. Funded by Erik Philip-Sörensens Stiftelse.

(2006-2007) Challenging Gender Stereotypes using Virtual Pedagogical Agents. An exploration of role modelling and identification in the context of web-based information about university educational programmes 
In collaboration with and funded by: GLIT, LearnIT & The Swedish Knowledge Foundation.

(2006) The impact of Dialect, Gender and Professional Roles. Study of virtual experts presenting a health related topic and effects on people’s attitudes and evaluation of the information content. Focus on visual and voice-related aspects regarding gender, dialect and professional roles.

(2002-2005) The importance of cognitive variation for the design of pedagogical multimedia. Studies of visual style, social style and pedagogical roles in a pedagogical learning game. Funded by The Swedish Research Council.

Video presentations:

Recent student papers and theses:

• Nygren, Sofia (2011). Educational games for teens: what makes a teenager intrinsically motivated to learn? Course work.

• Ljunglöv, Robin (2011). Prestation, intresse, engagemang, uppskattning : Skillnader i upplevelse av en virtuell lärmiljö mellan matematiskt hög- och lågpresterande elever. Bachelor thesis.

• Kristin Raukola, Kristin (2011). Virtuellt genus. Bacherlor thesis.

• Husain, Layla (2011). Getting Serious about Math: Serious Game Design Framework & an Example of a Math Educational Game. Master thesis.

• Sandberg-Frid, Linnea (2011). Thinking with a tool – what age and technology use reveals about cognition. Master thesis.

CLICK HERE FOR PREVIOUS STUDENT PAPERS AND THESES

• Tärning, B., Haake, M. & Gulz. A. (2011). Off-task Engagement in a Teachable Agent based Math Game. In T. Hirashima et al. (Eds.) (2011). Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computers in Education. Chiang Mai, Thailand.

• Sjödén, B. (2011). Social Motivation and Goal Orientations with a Teachable Agent: Implications for Improving Test Performance. Poster presentation at the 19th International Conference on Computers in Education. Chiang Mai, Thailand. Award for best Poster Presentation.

• Lindström P., Haake, M, Sjödén, B. & Gulz, A. (2011). Matching and mismatching between the pedagogical design principles of a maths game and the actual practices of play. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27, 90-102.

• Gulz, A., Haake, M., Silvervarg, A., Sjödén, B. & Veletsianos. (2011). ”Building a Social Conversational Pedagogical Agent – Design Challenges and Methodological Approaches”. In Conversational Agents and Natural Language Interaction: Techniques and Effective Practices (Eds.) D. Perez-Marin & I. Pascual-Nieto, IGI Global.

• Haake, M., Silvervarg, A., Tärning, B. & Gulz A. (2011). Teaching Her, Him…or Hir? Challenges for a Cross-Cultural Study. Intelligent Virtual Agents, 2010. In (Eds.) S. Kopp, S. Marsella,K. Thorisson & H. Vilhjalmsson, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag.

• Pareto, L., Haake, M., Lindström, P., & Sjödén, B. & Gulz, A. (under revision). A Teachable Agent Based Game Affording Collaboration and Competition – Evaluating Math Comprehension and Motivation.

• Gulz, A., Haake., M., & Silvervarg, A. (2011). Extending a Teachable Agent with a Social Conversation Module – Effects on Student Experiences and Learning. Proceedings of The 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. Auckland, New Zealand, 27 June 2 July, 2011. In G. Biswas et al. (Eds.): AIED 2011, LNAI 6738, pp. 106-114, 2011. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

• Sjödén, B., Tärning, B., Pareto. L., & Gulz, A. (2011): Transferring Teaching to Testing – an Unexplored Aspect of Teachable Agents. Proceedings ofs The 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. Auckland, New Zealand, 27 June 2 July, 2011. In G. Biswas et al. (Eds.): AIED 2011, LNAI 6738, pp. 337-344, 2011. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

• Pareto, L., Arvemo, T., Dahl, Y., Haake., M., & Gulz, A. (2011). A Teachable-Agent Arithmetic Game’s effects on Mathematics Understanding, Attitude and Self-Efficacy. Proceedings of The 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. Auckland, New Zealand, 27 June 2 July, 2011. 247-255.

• Haake, M., Silvervarg, A., Tärning, B., Sjödén, B., Pareto, L., & Gulz, A. (2011) Pedagogical Agents: Pedagogical Interventions via Integration of Task-oriented and Socially Oriented Conversation. Part of the AERA 2011 Symposium Proposal ”Pedagogical Agent Presence, Appearance, and Agent-learner Interactions: Current Research and Future Directions”.

• Silvervarg A. & Jönsson A. (2011). Subjective and Objective Evaluation of Conversational Agents. In Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Knowledge and Reasoning in Practical Dialogue Systems . Barcelona, Spain.

• Silvervarg, A., Haake. M., Pareto, L., Thomas Strandberg & Gulz, A. (2011). AIED interactive event: ”The Brick Game” demonstration. Proceedings of The 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. Auckland, New Zealand, 27 June 2 July, 2011.

• Sjödén, B., Silvervarg, A., Haake, M. & Gulz A. (2011). Extending an educational math game with a pedagogical conversational agent: facing design challenges. In: S. DeWannemacker, G. Clarebout, P. DeCausmaecker (Eds.): ITEC2010,CCIS 126, pp. 116-130. Springer, Heidelberg

CLICK HERE FOR PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS