Abstract
Online education has been gaining popularity over the years. This year, in particular, online education has been normalized because of COVID-19, with many predicting that it is here to stay. Prior research has shown that online learners frequently experience social isolation due to the lack of face-to-face interactions. To tackle this problem, we built a virtual agent, SAMI, that leverages online students’ self-introduction posts from the class discussion forum to help them make social connections. The agent has been running on several online classes for three semesters so far. In this position paper, we summarize lessons learned and potential design challenges based on our research with online learners regarding the design of agent-mediated social connections. Even though our work has taken place in online learning, we believe many findings are potentially transferable to other remote communities.
Designing for Agent-Mediated Online Social Connections: Lessons Learned and Potential Challenges
