Promoting Growth Mindset Within Intelligent Tutoring Systems

This study is just finishing up but has not yet been published. It sought to determine if motivational messages would effect learning gains and student persistence within ASSISTments. These motivational messages were delivered by an avatar Jane see in the experiment view.

Control

Students received ASSISTments assignments as usual. Feedback strategies were unaltered.

Experiment

Students ASSISTments content enhanced with motivational messages. This study utilized multiple experimental conditions to determine the effect of audible, animated, and purely textual messages. In two conditions, a pedagogical agent named Jane who originates from "Wayang Outpost," delivered the messages. Motivational messages were set to load either alongside the main problem, or within the scaffolding feedback the student received upon answering incorrectly.

Motivation Message Type 1.

Motivation Message Type 2

Motivation Message Type 3

(The example no longer works as a demo as it was done with flash and that no longer works (but the link is here))

Ostrow, K. S., Schultz, S. E. & Arroyo, I. (2014). Promoting growth mindset within intelligent tutoring systems. In Sergio Gutiérrez Santos, Olga C. Santos (Eds.): Proceedings of the Workshops on The Non-Cognitive Factors and Personalization for Adaptive Learning (NCFPAL) held at Educational Data Mining 2014, London, United Kingdom, July 4-7, 2014.