Workshops with Cognitive Agents Have Begun.

On June 2, 2023, the first workshop with a gamified cognitive agent for the students of the II Elementary School Varaždin was held. The 2nd grade class, along with their homeroom teacher Natalija Lončar, designed a cognitive agent named Mick. The members of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from the partner institution, the Faculty of Organization and Informatics, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Sc. Markus Schatten, implemented and adapted Mick for use.

The workshop was led by the computer science teacher Marinela Schatten, M.Sc., an external collaborator, and Dr. Sc. Bogdan Okreša Đurić and Tomislav Peharda, M.Sc., representatives of Partner 1 (Artificial Intelligence Laboratory).

Conversation cognitive agents are artificial intelligence systems that include a speech interface (it is possible to directly converse with them, i.e., they respond to human speech), a graphical interface (containing an avatar that responds to speech), and are intelligent (capable of automating various actions that would otherwise be carried out by a human). Many scientific studies show that the application of conversational cognitive agents in education yields very good results in achieving learning outcomes.

The plan is to conduct at least 9 workshops for students, with a total of 12 teachers working on their development and implementation. Students with difficulties will also participate in all workshops to test newly developed teaching methods based on gamification and artificial intelligence.

The main objectives of each workshop are:

1. Acquiring STEAM skills in students, especially those with difficulties.
2. Testing new methods and techniques of teaching STEAM content and using STEAM methods (acquired by teachers in educational workshops in Activity 1).
3. Testing new teaching methods based on gamification, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality (developed in Activity 2).

The created cognitive agent Micko, which talks about summer, has been released as open-source software and is available for anyone who wants to try it at the following link: https://dragon.foi.hr/micko

Photos from the workshop for the 2nd-grade students are included below.