In this paper, we presented the eff

In this paper, we presented the effect ofpoliteness strategieson students’ learning
performance, which we call the Politeness Effect. Across all students, a polite agent,
compared to a direct agent, had a positive impact on students’ learning gains. Richer
interaction amplified this effect. And for students with need for indirect help or who had
lower ability for the task, the polite agent was much more effective than the direct agent. For
students with high extroversion or who were more open to communication with the agent, the
polite agent helped them better understand difficult concepts. Making students like the agent
appeared to help students learn. But it was notthe appearance of the agent, but rather the
helpfulness and feedback manner adopted by the agent that created the effect.
Tutorial dialogue is certainly not the only place to apply politeness strategies. In our
study, we artificially restricted the use of politeness in tutorial interaction to ensure that the
polite condition and the direct condition were assimilar as possible. In real human-human
interaction, people employ a range of additional strategies to build rapport and react
empathetically. These strategieshave been modelled in other learning domains [5, 19], and
could complement the strategies studied here. We did not include them in this particular study
because it would have increased the frequency of tutorial interaction, making it harder to tell
whether the Politeness Effect was really a consequence of the frequency of interaction rather
than the politeness strategies themselves.
The politeness effect goes beyond the engineering training system we demonstrated
here. Other studies we have conducted shown thatpoliteness strategies do occur pervasively
in other domains such as second language learning [20]. However, more research will have to
be done to study their effects on learning outcomes in other domains.
We recommend that developers of intelligenttutors and pedagogicalagents examine the
tutorial messages that their tutors are generating from a politeness perspective, as politeness
may have an impact on the tutors' effectiveness. Meanwhile, more research needs to be done
to study how the Politeness Effect applies in other learning contexts, and investigate other
aspects of social actor modelling thatgo beyond the tactics studied her