How to Integrate Emotions in Dialogues With Pedagogic Conversational Agents to Teach Programming to Children

Abstract

Pedagogic conversational agents are interactive systems that allow students to dialogue with them about a certain domain to learn. PCAs have been used in multiple domains from pre-primary education to university, in roles such as teacher, student, or companion. In this chapter, Alcody, a PCA to teach programming to children, is enhanced with a new proposal to manage emotions in the dialogue with students. The goal is that when children are learning to program, Alcody can help them with the emotions associated to the learning. Six emotions have been integrated into Alcody: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust. A description of how a PCA to teach programming can modify its face and verbal expressions according to the emotion detected in the student. This is given for any other researcher that would like to incorporate emotions in dialogues between PCAs and students.