Designing affective computing learning companions with teachers as design partners

There is a growing interest in studying the potential of including models of emotion in Embodied Pedagogical Agents (EPA), included in Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) software. Children's understanding and response to emotions matures alongside their cognitive development. Any model of emotions embedded in an EPA will impact children's responses, and use of the EPA characters. Therefore EPA design should include both user characteristics and the pedagogical purposes behind the CAL system. This paper presents the participatory design of an EPA's affective responses to children's interaction with mathematical software. The participatory design sessions were performed with teachers as partners in designing the affective learning components. The results of a pilot study on children's responses to the emotional sequence defined in the model will be introduced, as a separate study. Finally, a plan of future research is presented to further validate the model's potential for CAL systems, including the integration two software learning applications constructed during the design sessions with teachers.