Related Literature Group 4

Summaries

Problem Statement

• In the paper by Xiao et al., it was researched what kind of impact working from home has on social, behavioural and physical well-being during COVID-19. They distributed a questionnaire in which 988 valid responses were gathered. The sample had an average age of 40.9. They found that working from home, full time can contribute to mental issues for people that live online. These mental issues are for example isolation and depression, because these people do not have face-to-face interactions and do not receive social support from people living in the same home.

• The article also found that there can be work-family conflict inside of the house. This means that it is hard for people to separate work and family from each other because the boundaries are very blurred when working from home. Most participants had a hard time balancing work schedules because they could for example be interrupted by their family members. Emotional exhaustion is a possible result of this ongoing work-family conflict.

• Additionally, the researchers found that there are physical health problems that can arise from working from home. These problems can for example arise because employees do not have the ability to walk around in the office space, or outside in between meetings. Additionally, the high exposure to computer screens can result in fatigue, tiredness, headaches and eye-related symptoms.

• The goal of the following study was to investigate the prevalence of unhealthy behaviour before and during the COVID-19 quarantine amongst Brazilian adults. In total, data of 38.535 adults was gathered. Participants had to report the frequency of certain feelings, such as sadness, happiness etc. Additionally, they were asked to report the frequency and duration of their physical activities and their TV and computer/tablet use from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found that, because of quarantine, people showed an increase of sedentary behaviours (more than 8 hours per day) and a decrease of physical activities. This can affect cardiovascular, metabolic, and mental health, and this all increases the risk of mortality. Furthermore, they found that the unhealthy behavior was also associated with feelings of loneliness, sadness and anxiety

• The paper researched constraints of mandatory home education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of the parents of first to ninth graders. It has been found that parents especially have time, expertise and technical restrictions. To obtain this, they would suggest more interaction with the teacher, both the children and the parents.

State of the Art

• There exists already a platform, called “X5Learn”, that helps its users (both students and teachers) with online education purposes. It can help students, for instance, by providing personal recommendations and adapting to their individual learning preferences. On the other hand, it enables collaboration of sources for teachers. Special about this platform is the fact that it combines both human-centered design, AI, and software tools. In this way, it makes sure that the service is easy, intuitive, and transparent to its users.

• The goal of the study by Kessens et al. was to develop a personal computer assistant that helps children to adhere to performing daily activities and living healthy. This personal computer assistant had three roles, namely a companion, educator and motivator role. The companion robot gives emotional support and allows the children to also play with it. If the assistant takes on the educational role, it can teach and explain. When the robot takes on the motivational role it can encourage the children to adhere to a healthy lifestyle and it can learn them that adherence is important. The participants of the experiment with the assistant were children of 8 and 9 years old. In total there were 18 participants, of which 8 participants were female. The study showed that the more human-like the interaction with the computer assistant was (for example using different emotional expressions), the more persuasive, engaging and fun the interaction was between the computer and the child. The computer assistant showed to have the opportunity to increase motivation and self-performance management amongst the children compare to when they did not use the assistant. Also, the assistant was able to reduce the BMI of the users. Both children and adults enjoyed the computer assistant.

• The following paper by Chou, Chan, & Lin discusses the history of learning agents and its potential (both positive and negative) for the future. Educational agents could help to improve a social learning environment. However, the complexity of the educational agents makes development expensive and difficult. The paper also addresses the classification of educational agents, which is the larger group of software that helps social learning through a human approach. A learning companion falls within this branch and is defined as a “computer-simulated character, which has human characteristics and plays a non-authoritative role in a social learning environment".

• In the paper of Cambo, Avrahami and Lee it has been researched why work breaks are important and how to motivate users to increase physical activity. They want to reach this by wrapping this break in a playful interaction. Therefore, they came up with an application called BreakSense. They have decided that it is not necessary for the device to interrupt the user, since it is better for the user to self-interrupt and initiate a break themselves. This helped the participants in a way that using the device, induced physical activity in their daily routine.

Appearance

• It is possible to program a chatbot in a way that it will interact with you via a moving and talking avatar. The paper also suggests that displaying facial expressions are beneficial in the interaction with such an agent, since displaying the avatar’s emotion can enhance perceived emotional intelligence.