Anxiety and stress of new coronavirus (COVID-19) in medical personnel

Educational agents are screen characters that can influence learning outcomes and learner behaviors by playing different roles. Educational agents have been changed during the history from electronic performance support systems to tutoring systems and have moved towards human-like avatars; now, following the development of artificial intelligence and its usage in learning, they have called intelligent educational agents and have been regarded as one of the topics in the field of educational technology and can be used in teaching various sciences, including medicine.

This study systematically reviewed the studies related to the roles of the educational agent and their impact from 2010 to 2019 in Science Direct, Springer, Google Scholar, and IEEEXplore databases. The included studies were all experimental studies written in English. The keywords of educational agent and pedagogical agent have been used to search articles.

Based on the search strategy and following deleting the items that either could not be accessed to the full version of the article or the abstract did not contain complete information, on one side and was not related to the research questions on the other side, 30 articles were reviewed. Findings showed that educational agents in different situations take on different roles such as coach, specialist, facilitator, motivator, feedback, etc., and these roles have a positive effect on learners' learning outcomes and behaviors.

The educational factor can positively influence learning outcomes as well as learners' behaviors by taking on various roles such as feedback, motivator, facilitator, instructor, etc. Therefore, to design e-learning environments, it is necessary to use educational agents to improve the quality of learning.