#103: Social Presence with AI-Integrated Student Agents in a Teaching Simulator Leads to Higher Immersion but Not Learning

This paper reports on an experiment examining perceptions of social presence with AI-integrated student agents in a prototype teacher training simulation. I hypothesized that perceived immersion in the simulation would increase social presence, and that social presence would lead to increased learning gains. A univariate analysis showed that immersion significantly predicted social presence, but perceptions of agent fidelity did not. A regression analysis showed that social presence did not impact learning gains. Design implications and future research directions are discussed.