Creative Education, 2018, 9, 1726-1742 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ce ISSN Online: 2151-4771 ISSN Print: 2151-4755 DOI: 10.4236/ce.2018.911126 Aug. 31, 2018 1726 Creative Education Conversational Agents in Distance Education: Comparing Mood States with Students’ Perception Aliane Loureiro Krassmann, Fábio Josende Paz, Clóvis Silveira, Liane Margarida Rockenbach Tarouco, Magda Bercht Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática na Educação (PPGIE), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Abstract One of the advantages of a Conversational Agent is that it stimulates social presence among Distance Education students, providing continuous psycho- logical and pedagogical support. However, the interaction between students and virtual agents is often functionally ineffective. In this regard, this study aims to investigate students’ mood states, inferred by chat log analysis of in- teractions between students and a Conversational Agent, relating such mood states with the students’ perceptions about the tool. The study was conducted with a sample of students attending a Distance Education post-graduation course. The results showed the relationship between interest, utility and sa- tisfaction perceived by the students with mood states detected by the log analysis. Also, the underutilization of the Conversational Agents was diag- nosed, and improvements to be implemented so that negative mood states which can be overcome were identified. The research brings contributions on building better Conversational Agents for educational purposes. Keywords Conversational Agents, Distance Education, Students’ Perception, Mood States, Affective Computing 1. Introduction One of the biggest technological trends nowadays is the intelligent virtual assis- tants (e.g. Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s As- sistant), also called chatbots, Conversational Agents (CA), conversational enti- How to cite this paper: Krassmann, A. L., Paz, F. J., Silveira, C., Tarouco, L. M. R., & Bercht, M. (2018). Conversational Agents in Distance Education: Comparing Mood States with Students’ Perception. Creative Education, 9, 1726-1742. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2018.911126 Received: July 19, 2018 Accepted: August 28, 2018 Published: August 31, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access