Abstract
Attention is critical for learning, but difficult to sustain. Here, we investigated the possibility of integrating a short mindfulness exercise into an ITS to reduce mind wandering (MW)—an attentional shift from task-relevant to task-irrelevant thoughts—and improve learning. Participants were randomly assigned to engage with a 5-min auditory mindfulness exercise (experimental group), a relaxation exercise (active control group), or nothing (control group) before completing a 20-min (SD = 5.77) learning session from GuruTutor, a conversational biology ITS. Participants self-reported MW in response to pseudo-random thought probes during learning and completed pre- and posttest assessments that measured learning. On average, participants reported MW on 25% (SD = 20%) of probes, but there was no evidence that MW rates or learning varied across conditions. Our findings suggest that integrating this mindfulness exercise did not improve attention or learning within the ITS.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Artificial Intelligence in Education - 19th International Conference, AIED 2018, Proceedings |
| Editors | Rose Luckin, Kaska Porayska-Pomsta, Benedict du Boulay, Manolis Mavrikis, Carolyn Penstein Rosé, Bruce McLaren, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, H. Ulrich Hoppe |
| Publisher | Springer Verlag |
| Pages | 176-181 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9783319938455 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2018 - London, United Kingdom Duration: Jun 27 2018 → Jun 30 2018 |
Publication series
| Name | Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) |
|---|---|
| Volume | 10948 LNAI |
| ISSN (Print) | 0302-9743 |
| ISSN (Electronic) | 1611-3349 |
Conference
| Conference | 19th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2018 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| City | London |
| Period | 6/27/18 → 6/30/18 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.
Keywords
- Intelligent tutoring systems
- Learning
- Mind wandering
- Mindfulness