Affective Pedagogical Agent in E-Learning Environment: A Reflective Analysis

In educational research the relationship between affect/emotion and performance on cognitive tasks is well documented in both the neuroscience and psychology literatures. Researchers have claimed that emotions play a vital role in perception, learning, decision making, rational thinking and other cognitive functions. At the same time some others have added that both the positive and negative affective states are equally important in the learning process. In the real-life physical learning environment students’ affective feedback is a major cue that human tutors use to constantly adapt their teaching strategies, so that learning would be most effective and efficient for each individual learner. Thus, in e-learning environment it’s a research issue to think about how to design an artificial affective tutor or pedagogical agent, who can respond to students’ emotion and accordingly guide and motivate them for better learning. However, for post-secondary learners it may be relevant, but for secondary level Indian students can it be feasible and cost-effective ICT learning tools. This raises many more questions about content, pedagogy, software designing and implementation of affective pedagogical agents as ICT learning tools in Indian school education system.