Winslow Burleson, Rosalind W. Picard

Abstract

Since failure, over and over and over again, is a prerequisite to becoming an expert, so to is the ability to persevere and remain motivated through failure. Many researchers creating ITSs have taken the approach of manipulating the task in terms of difficulty, focus, and other parameters in an effort to sustain users’ motivation. There are numerous circumstances where this approach is impractical, undesirable, or simply impossible. This task-manipulation approach misses the important opportunity to help users develop skills to deal with failure and frustration. We propose instead an approach that uses affective agents1 to help users develop metacognitive skills such as affective selfawareness for dealing with failure and frustration. An important element of our approach is the use of one or more affective agents as peer learning companions to facilitate development of empathetic relationships with learners. This paper describes work in progress exploring how characteristics of affective agents can influence perseverance in the face of failure.