Ella me ayudó (she helped me): Supporting Hispanic and English language learners in a math ITS

Abstract

Many intelligent tutors are not designed with English language learners (ELL) in mind. As a result, Hispanic ELL students, a large and underserved population in U.S. classrooms, may experience difficulty accessing the relevant tutor content. This research investigates how Hispanic and ELL students perceive the utility of and relate to animated pedagogical agents based on evaluating two theories of learning: students will be more attracted to a learning companion (LC) avatars that matches their personality and will regard a LC as a substitute self-construction. Results indicate that ELL students find LCs more useful and helpful than do Caucasian students and ELL students purposely design LCs that look more like themselves than do the non-ELL students.