The Friend: Socially-Intelligent Tutoring and Collaboration

Motivation as key factor for maintaining effective learning must be maintained during computer-supported learning. For this, we attempt to investigate the benefits of a socially intelligent tutoring agent that goes beyond attending to aspects of an individual student, the tutoring friend. In a computer-supported learning system, a tutoring friend is an artificial agent that manages relationships with learners, monitors their social behavior, and is able to assemble socially-aware groups for peer collaboration. We hypothesize that intelligent tutoring friends can motivate students to long-term participation by the virtue of social affordances they provide.