April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

considered on a case-by-case basis while providing empathic avatars as their learning assistants. These experiments
and findings could have many important implications for educational software design.
Future research could develop sophisticated avatars that clearly engage with students’ cognition and emotion.
Automatic detection of emotions and cognition could also enhance functionality. The proposed methodology needs
long-term examination and a large number of subjects to examine the design.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the researchers, teachers and students who participate in the system design, implementation
and experiment. We are also grateful for the support of the National Science Council, Taiwan, under NSC 99-2631-
S-008-004 and 99-2631-S-008-006-CC3. We would also like to thank the support from Research Center for Science
and Technology for Learning, National Central University, Taiwan.
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