Finch, D. K., & Edwards, S. H. (2020, June), Using a Pedagogical Agent to Support Students Learning to Program  Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35447

\bibitem{asee_peer_35447}
  Finch, D. K., \& Edwards, S. H. (2020, June), \emph{Using a Pedagogical Agent to Support Students Learning to Program}
  Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line .
  10.18260/1-2--35447

Dylan Keifer Finch and Stephen H. Edwards.  "Using a Pedagogical Agent to Support Students Learning to Program".  2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line , 2020, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2020.  https://peer.asee.org/35447 Internet.  10 Mar, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_35447}
  Dylan Keifer Finch and Stephen H. Edwards.
  "Using a Pedagogical Agent to Support Students Learning to Program".
  \emph{2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line , 2020, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2020.
  https://peer.asee.org/35447 Internet.  10 Mar, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_35447
author = "Dylan Keifer Finch and Stephen H. Edwards"
title = "Using a Pedagogical Agent to Support Students Learning to Program"
booktitle = "2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access"
year = "2020"
month = "June"
address = "Virtual On line "
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/35447}
number = {10.18260/1-2--35447}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Many colleges face a lack of support for their computer science students. There is not enough faculty to give each student adequate instructional and emotional support. This experience report describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a solution to this problem: a pedagogical agent named Maria. A pedagogical agent is a human-like interface designed to simulate the relationship between teacher and student. In this way, Maria functions like a virtual teaching assistant, filling the gap left by inadequate human facility. Students can ask Maria natural language questions about computer science and get natural language answers. Maria was designed to: (1) make students want to ask her questions, (2) answer student questions, and (3) provide emotional support to students. Maria's implementation focuses on achieving these goals. To make students want to ask questions, Maria is relatable and easy to access. To make sure Maria was able to answer questions, she was programmed with the answers many common computer science and general knowledge questions. She can also walk students through more complicated issues (like finding the cause of a NullPointerException). Finally, to provide emotional support to students, Maria will give students tips on how to improve their score on programming assignments and will congratulate students when they correctly fix problems with their code. Maria will be evaluated by examining usage and survey data to find out the proportion of students who asked questions, the proportion of students who used Maria multiple times, and whether or not students found Maria helpful.

AU  - Dylan Keifer Finch
AU  - Stephen H. Edwards
CY  - Virtual On line 
DA  - 2020/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Using a Pedagogical Agent to Support Students Learning to Program
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/35447
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--35447
ER  -