Abstract. This paper describes the design and empirical validation of three distinct pedagogical agent roles (Expert, Motivator, and Mentor) for college students within the MIMIC (Multiple Intelligent Mentors Instructing Collaboratively) agent-based research environment. The pedagogical agent roles were operationalized by image, animation, affect, voice, and dialogue and were developed in Poser 4 and implemented via Microsoft Agent. Two controlled experiments validated the instantiation of the three roles according to learner perception (N=78) and actual impact on motivation and learning (N=71). The results confirmed that the agent roles were not only perceived by the students to reflect their intended purposes but also led to significant changes in learning and motivation, as designed. Specifically, the Expert agent led to increased information acquisition, the Motivator led to increased self-efficacy, and the Mentor led to overall improved learning and motivation. The implications for intelligent tutoring and multi-agent system design and development is discussed.

This study was conducted to determine factors that promote success in an introductory college computer science course and to determine what, if any, differences appear between genders on those factors. The model included math background, attribution for success/failure, self-efficacy, encouragement, comfort level in the course, work style preference, previous programming experience, previous non-programming computer experience, and gender as possible predictive factors for success in the computer science course. Subjects included 105 students enrolled in an introductory computer science course. The study revealed three predictive factors in the following order of importance: comfort level (with a positive influence), math background (with a positive influence), and attribution to luck (with a negative influence). No significant gender differences were found in these three factors. The study also revealed that both a formal class in programming (which had a positive correlation) and game playing (which had a negative correlation) were predictive of success. The study revealed a significant gender difference in game playing with males reporting more experience with playing games on the computer than females reported.

We draw upon strategic management theory, organizational behavior theory, organization theory, and entrepreneurship models to form an integrated model of venture growth including 17 concepts from 5 micro/macro research domains. The model was tested with responses from 307 companies from the architectural woodworking industry. CEO’s specific competencies and motivation, and competitive strategies, were direct predictors of venture growth. CEO’s traits and general competencies, and the environment had significant indirect effects. 3 This research explores the causes of venture growth. Past entrepreneurship research has often studied individual differences (Begley & Boyd, 1987), strategic management concepts (McDougall, Robinson, & DeNisi, 1992), and organization theory concepts (Aldrich & Wiedenmayer, 1993) as isolated causes of venture performance. More recent studies propose that individual, organizational, and environmental dimensions combine to provide a more comprehensive prediction of venture development and growth than any one dimension in

The mere psychological presence of relationship partners was hypothesized to trigger interpersonal goals that are then pursued nonconsciously. Qualitative data suggested that people tend to pursue different interpersonal goals within different types of relationships (e.g., mother, best friend, coworker). In several studies, priming participants ’ relationship representations produced goal-directed behavior (achievement, helping, understanding) in line with the previously assessed goal content of those representations. These findings support the hypothesis that interpersonal goals are component features of relationship representations and that mere activation of those representations, even in the partner’s physical absence, causes the goals to become active and to guide behavior nonconsciously within the current situation. Many of people’s most strongly held goals, fears, and desires spring from their ongoing close relationships. Friends, family members, colleagues, and romantic partners are those whom people try hardest to understand, to whom they wish to grow closer, and from whom they seek to gain approval. Relationship partners are the elicitors of strong and influential motivations—motivations that alter people’s perceptions, change their emotions, and guide

The field of children's testimony is in turmoil, but a resolution to seemingly intractable debates now appears attainable. In this review, we place the current disagreement in historical context and describe psychological and legal views of child witnesses held by scholars since the turn of the 20th century. Although there has been consistent interest in children's suggestibility over the past century, the past 15 years have been the most active in terms of the number of published studies and novel theorizing about the causal mechanisms that underpin the observed findings. A synthesis of this research posits three "families " of factors—cognitive, social, and biological—that must be considered if one is to understand seemingly contradictory interpretations of the findings. We conclude that there are reliable age differences in suggestibility but that even very young children are capable of recalling much that is forensically relevant. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of expert witnesses. Since the turn of the century, psycholegal scholars have examined the suggestibility of children's testimony in an effort to determine whether they would be credible witnesses. A major issue in this research concerns the degree to which heightened

In this article the trajectory of an online course in which graduate students collaboratively investigated and shared their personal experiences with respect to adult development is described. For this study, naturalistic inquiry was used to gain a holistic view of this semester-long course and to identify the specific emergent issues that characterized course dynamics. Using open, axial, and, to a lesser degree, selective coding, the following three issues were selected for further discussion: (a) flexibility of course to accommodate participants; (b) co-construction of meaning through the sharing of personal experiences; and (c) the expression of vulnerability and personal growth. This course provided evidence that online courses can support deep learning about content, open sharing about personal experiences, and the development of a sense of camaraderie among participants. Students readily

This article develops a theoretical framework of distributed representations to explore the representational properties in group problem solving. The basic principle of distributed representations is that the representational system of a group problem solving task is distributed across the representations of individuals, structure of the task. The framework was used to analyze the distributed representation of the Waitress and Orange task. From this analysis, an experiment was designed to examine group problem solving behaviors under different distributed representations. The experiment shows that (1) different distributed representations across two individuals produced dramatically different group problem solving behaviors even if they had the same abstract structure, and (2) two minds could be better than, not different from, or even worse than one mind, depending on how representations were distributed across the two minds. These results further support the interactionist view of group problem solving, which is that the interactions among individuals can produce group cognitive properties that can neither be reduced to nor be inferred from the cognitive properties of individuals. Group problem solving refers to problem solving activities that involve interactions among a group of individuals. One critical issue in group problem solving is the nature of group properties. One view is that the cognitive properties of a group can be entirely determined by the properties of indi-

The purpose of this study was to explore the personal stories of women who selected and continue to excel at careers in areas of mathematics, science, and technology to better understand the ways in which their self-efficacy beliefs influenced their academic and career choices. Analysis of 15 narratives revealed that vicarious experiences and verbal persuasions were critical sources of the women's self-efficacy beliefs. These findings suggest that the perceived importance of these sources of self-efficacy beliefs may be stronger for women in male-oriented domains than for the majority of individuals operating in traditional settings. As expected, self-efficacy perceptions resulted in the perseverance and resiliency required to overcome academic and career obstacles. Findings support and refine the theoretical tenets of A. Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory, and they also suggest that critical tenets in this theory are consistent with the work of C. Gilligan (1982). 2 AGAINST TH...

Abstract. This paper describes a toolkit for measuring fun with children aged between 5 and 10. The relationship of fun to usability is discussed and three dimensions of fun; Endurability, Engagement, and Expectations are described. A set of tools that can be used in empirical studies to measure these dimensions of fun is described in detail. These tools include a Smileyometer, a Fun-Sorter and an Again-Again table. Three user trials, in which the tools have been used, are described and suggestions are made for the use of each of the tools with children. A discussion of the efficacy of the tools presents the findings that there is a sufficient subset that can be used to give a reliable measure of fun. Dependent on the nature of the event being evaluated and on the number of activities being compared; the subset will be differently constructed. The paper concludes with observations about the difficulties of measuring fun with children, and some areas for further work are presented. 1.

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