Description of Invention
There exists a phenomenon called students’ negative attitude towards mathematics, leading to a decline in students' performance in mathematics and influencing their decisions to refrain from pursuing STEM majors and careers. Studies show that using technology in education can reduce math anxiety by increasing students' motivation to explore and appreciate mathematics [1]. Conversational agents, automated software that interacts with users via natural language, can be used in education to support teaching and learning. Unfortunately, despite its nearly 60-year history, the application of this technology in the education domain is still scarce [2]. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of integrating conversational agent on students’ attitude towards mathematics. A research approach experiment was utilized, engaging undergraduate students at a university in Malaysia. To compare the impact of different teaching methods, students were randomly divided into two groups: a control group receiving only traditional classroom instruction and an experimental group receiving traditional instruction combined with interaction with a conversational agent. After that, they participated in a 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire on attitude towards mathematics. The findings revealed that integrating conversational agent in mathematics teaching and learning significantly improved experimental students’ anxiety towards mathematics while there was no improvement shown in the importance of mathematics.