The Effects of Motivational Modeling on Affect in an Intelligent Tutoring System

A motivationally-aware version of the Ecolab system was developed with the aim of improving the learners’ motivation. To gain some insight into the effects of motivational modeling on students’ affective states, we observed the affect of 180 students interacting with either Ecolab or M-Ecolab. The affective states considered were based on existing coding schemes [10]. The results suggest that the motivationally-aware tutoring system seems to maintain students’ delight over time. However, it seems the motivational interventions did not create new “virtuous cycles” of positive affect [10], or disrupt “vicious cycles”, where a student persists in a negative affective state.