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From understanding learners’ adaptive motivation and emotion to designing social learning companions

The research project is part of the Cluster of Excellence “Science of Intelligence” (SClol) at the Technische Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (funding: DFG; 2019-2025). The research aim of SClol is to explore the principles of intelligence. 

In the project “From understanding learners’ adaptive motivation and emotion to designing social learning companions” (PI: Prof. Dr. Rebecca Lazarides; 2019-2023), we aim to investigate the importance of adaptive learning technologies for learning processes. To do so, we develop technologies that take into account each individual’s different emotional and motivational learning requirements in particular and adjust the learning process based on these.

The project is a cooperation between the Department of School Pedagogy at the UP (Prof. Dr. Rebecca Lazarides), the Department of Adaptive Systems (Prof. Dr. Verena Hafner; Informatics; HU Berlin) and the Department of Computer Science Education / Computer Science and Society (Prof. Dr. Niels Pinkwart; Informatics; HU Berlin).

Specifically, we ask to what extent Intelligent Tutorial Systems (IST) and learning robots can be used to adapt social learning situations to best support the motivational-affective development of individual students. The focus here is on adjusting the learning process to students’ different individual emotional and motivational learning requirements, e.g. through the selection of appropriate tasks, materials and learning aids, and adjusting the work pace. To answer these questions, we create a quasi-experimental setting. The new learning technologies are conceived as a support for teachers to be able to optimally address individual learners’ requirements also within subject-related instructional processes.

Publications on the topic

Lazarides, R. & Chevalère, J. (2021). Artificial intelligence and education: Addressing the variability in learners’ emotion and motivation with adaptive teaching assistants, 74(3), 264-279. Doi: https://doi.org/10.13109/buer.2021.74.3.264

Kirtay, M., Chevalère, J., Lazarides, R., & Hafner, V. V. (2021). Learning in Social Interaction: Perspectives from Psychology and Robotics. 2021 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDL49984.2021.9515648

Spatola, N., Chevalère, J., & Lazarides, R. (2021). Human vs computer: What effect does the source of information have on cognitive performance and achievement goal orientation? Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 12(1), 175–186. https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2021-0012