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The Mars and Venus Effect: The Influence of User Gender on the Effectiveness of Adaptive Task Support

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User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9146))

Abstract

Providing adaptive support to users engaged in learning tasks is the central focus of intelligent tutoring systems. There is evidence that female and male users may benefit differently from adaptive support, yet it is not understood how to most effectively adapt task support to gender. This paper reports on a study with four versions of an intelligent tutoring system for introductory computer programming offering different levels of cognitive (conceptual and problem-solving) and affective (motivational and engagement) support. The results show that female users reported significantly more engagement and less frustration with the affective support system than with other versions. In a human tutorial dialogue condition used for comparison, a consistent difference was observed between females and males. These results suggest the presence of the Mars and Venus Effect, a systematic difference in how female and male users benefit from cognitive and affective adaptive support. The findings point toward design principles to guide the development of gender-adaptive intelligent tutoring systems.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Alexandria Katarina Vail, Kristy Elizabeth Boyer & James C. Lester

  2. Department of STEM Education, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Eric N. Wiebe

Authors
  1. Alexandria Katarina Vail
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  2. Kristy Elizabeth Boyer
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  3. Eric N. Wiebe
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  4. James C. Lester
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandria Katarina Vail .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

    Francesco Ricci

  2. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

    Kalina Bontcheva

  3. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Owen Conlan

  4. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Séamus Lawless

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Vail, A.K., Boyer, K.E., Wiebe, E.N., Lester, J.C. (2015). The Mars and Venus Effect: The Influence of User Gender on the Effectiveness of Adaptive Task Support. In: Ricci, F., Bontcheva, K., Conlan, O., Lawless, S. (eds) User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization. UMAP 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9146. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20267-9_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20267-9_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20266-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20267-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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