Exploring Social Learning in Collaborative Augmented Reality With Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions

Social learning, simply defined as learning from others, is valuable as a modality that provides quick, informal education. Augmented reality (AR) may provide a framework for human-machine teaming paradigms which integrate both virtual Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions (PALs) and human learning collaborators. This article details the results of three collaborative AR experiments to explore social learning with PALs and humans. Our use case focuses on medical school students learning how to interview a patient with stroke symptoms. Despite noted challenges in quickly advancing technology, specifically the natural language processing (NLP), the research produced many instances of significant results in self-efficacy and conceptual and procedural learning. Findings are presented along with a way-ahead perspective on key focus areas to advance human-machine teaming in collaborative AR for learning.