Minecraft pedagogical agents: Examining the impact on situational interest with middle school students

This project investigates the impact of a pedagogical agent (PA) in Minecraft on in-game scientific interest behaviors with middle school students. To date, there has been little research regarding the design of PAs in an open-world simulation game like Minecraft. Thus, results from this quasi-experiment could have implications for features like PA navigation that have not been previously explored. This study occurs within the context of the What-If Hypothetical Implementations in Minecraft (WHIMC) project, which allows learners to explore scientifically plausible hypothetical versions of Earth, exoplanets, and other astronomy-related content in Minecraft. In this study, we compare 5 camp participants who interacted with a PA with the historical data from 64 campers from previous camps. Data was collected from summer and after-school camps in the Northeast, Midwest, and Mountain West United States. Quantitative analysis using unpaired Wilcoxon rank sum tests was employed with the log data collected during the sessions due to the skewed nature of the data. The findings demonstrated that giving students PAs did not statistically impact science tool or observation use. Although there were no significant results, students in the PA group made on average about .50 more science tool uses per participant. Thus, further research with a greater sample size of participants using the PA must be conducted to determine whether the current iteration has an overall effect on situational science interest.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Hum, Samuel

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lane, H. Chad
• Lindgren, Robb
• Paquette, Luc

• Pedagogical Agents
• Minecraft
• Interest
• Informal Learning
• Education
• Middle School

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Samuel Hum

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120252

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120252