A Systematic Identification of Pedagogical Conversational Agents

Conversational agents have been established to support educational practices, solving students' questions, recommending teaching materials, increasing the motivation of students who have little interest in certain content, among others. Although many studies are discussing the establishing of conversational agents, there is no global understanding of what has been investigated in this area. There are some previous secondary studies that have attempted to map the conversational agents used for educational purposes (i.e., pedagogical conversational agents). However, these studies are limited to include primary studies published in specific sets of conferences and journals. Therefore, an overview of the current state of the art associated with pedagogical conversational agents has not been produced yet. This research paper aims to contribute to the theme, through the presentation of planning, conduction, and results analysis of a systematic mapping on pedagogical conversational agents. We address the following questions: (i) in which areas have conversation agents been investigated?; (ii) at which education levels are conversational agents used?; (iii) which mechanisms do conversational agents use to interact with students?. We also present some discussions about research opportunities that can be explored in future works. This study aims to contribute to the topic of pedagogical conversational agents, helping researchers to have a deeper understanding of what has already been done and to guide their research to subjects not explored yet.