Animated Agents: Final Post

I am going to focus on the article, “When sex, drugs, and violence enter the classroom: Conversations between adolescents and a female pedagogical agent.” Like most of you (I’m sure), I was completely shocked by the questions posed to the agent from the students. I have never interacted with an animated agent before, but I wish I had experience with it prior to reading this article, for I feel that my response would be slightly different. I am not saying I would feel more or less upset, but having more knowledge about anything allows one to think deeper and more critically about the topic.

Moving into specific content, one part that caught my attention is when the article states that, “Another reason…users may be outspoken and verbally abusive when conversing with virtual characters may be because the Internet lowers human inhibitions (Hudson and Bruckman, 2002; Suler, 2004) – especially when anonymity is involved” (10). I think that I always subconsciously knew this, but I had never been able to put it into words. I also think that this can even relate to websites. In real life, some people may be embarrassed to go into places that may be socially unacceptable. Some examples of these include: adult video stores, strip clubs, sex toy stores, or even booths WITHIN the sex stores. Today, however, with the click of a computer mouse, people are able to access porn and other “amenities” these sites have to offer. Because no one can “see” them viewing these sites/merchandise and they are able to remain anonymous, they have a heightened sense of power and confidence. They can purchase anything on the web or download any movie they please. Getting back to the article, I think it is completely understandable that with anonymity, students, as well as people in general, lose inhibitions when surfing the internet. However, what shocks me the most is the fact that it was an academic agent that students were communicating with. As the article states later, I feel that their questions would have been somewhat benign had they known that the questions were being documented. It is possible that because this was something new, they wanted to work it from every angle. Maybe they were curious about this “animated agent” and wanted to know more about it. Now, I am by no means attempted to justify their actions; but I do know that students are NOT mature, and if they get the chance to mess with “authority figures,” they are going to take it.

This is comparable to language used within a classroom. Upon students entering the classroom the first day, the teacher sets up the environment and rules that will remain throughout the year. If a student uses vulgar language or profanity in discussion or discourse with his/her friends under the teacher’s supervision, and the teacher says nothing about it, then that gives students the green light to continue using that language within the classroom. However, if the teacher reprimands them immediately, then he/she is stating that that kind of language is unacceptable. This is very similar to the conversations between the agent and students the article is based on. The students made sexual comments and verbally abused the agent, but she did not give the “wanted” response by the students. Although the responses to the students’ profane questions rarely made sense, at least she was not feeding into the inappropriate questions. I think that had they had more days to ask the agent questions, there would have been less verbal abuse and more academic-related questions. After the students realize that nothing will come from making inappropriate remarks and asking obscene questions, their interest will eventually fade away.

After writing this post, I feel that I still possess the same questions I had upon finishing the article, and I am deeply intrigued to know what the students’ questions would have been like had the agent been a male. And why is it that the agent was female? Was there a choice in the matter of the gender? Does her appearance really make a difference? In my opinion, I think that students would respond the same way if she was dressed in jeans and a regular t-shirt (as long as it was not provocative). I am very interested in knowing more about this topic, and I plan on continuing my research with this in the future.