Can a Humorous Conversational Agent Enhance Learning Experience and Outcomes?
This work addresses how humor styles in educational agents affect learner engagement, offering incremental insights for personalized learning tools.
The study investigated whether a conversational agent using affiliative or self-defeating humor improves learning experiences and outcomes, finding that affiliative humor significantly increased motivation and effort, while self-defeating humor boosted effort but reduced enjoyment among 58 participants.
Previous studies have highlighted the benefits of pedagogical conversational agents using socially-oriented conversation with students. In this work, we examine the effects of a conversational agent's use of affiliative and self-defeating humour -- considered conducive to social well-being and enhancing interpersonal relationships -- on learners' perception of the agent and attitudes towards the task. Using a between-subjects protocol, 58 participants taught a conversational agent about rock classification using a learning-by-teaching platform, the Curiosity Notebook. While all agents were curious and enthusiastic, the style of humour was manipulated such that the agent either expressed an affiliative style, a self-defeating style, or no humour. Results demonstrate that affiliative humour can significantly increase motivation and effort, while self-defeating humour, although enhancing effort, negatively impacts enjoyment. Findings further highlight the importance of understanding learner characteristics when using humour.