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Over the last decade, digital technology has been increasingly used for educational purposes. The rationale behind this emerging trend is the belief that information technology can be utilized as a powerful means to assist learners with the acquisition of general knowledge, literacy, narrative competence, social skills like teamwork and negotiation capabilities, logical and spatial reasoning, eye-hand coordination and fine motor control, etc. In particular computer games and interactive technology have attracted a great deal of attention and much active research is currently being carried out in an effort to investigate their possible benefits in education (Squire, 2005). In this paper, we report on the development and evaluation of an educational agent architecture that allows for instructive communication and natural human-computer interaction between humans, in particular children and adolescents, and embodied historical characters. Our e-learning software platform is built around a three-dimensional animated portrayal of the world famous writer Hans Christian Andersen. Users can interact with the graphical character through a combination of speech, (pen and/or mouse) gesture, and keyboard and, in so doing, ask the virtual character questions about Andersen’s life, family, historical background, fairy tales and stories. The avatar is endowed with basic affective and emotional capabilities, and uses both synthesized speech and gestures to converse with the pupils. The intent of the system is educational while the interactive nature of the character is designed to help children learn and retain information about the subject matter to a greater extent than would be possible with traditional media. The educational content is pervasive for it is blended within the game-like system interface. In fact, there is no clear cut distinction between the system and the educational content which is always presented in different ways according to the conversational situation thus providing children with new opportunities for effective, immersive and rewarding computer-aided learning experiences. Conceptually, our system is backed by theories of user-centered learning as well as cognition. The constructivist theory of education (Mantovani, 2001) that recognizes the importance of active experience of students with the learning material supports our approach to education. Findings in the theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2001) that O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .in te ch w eb .o rg

Conversational Characters that Support Interactive Play and Learning for Children