ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Impact of educational agents on student's learning outcomes: a meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Fine Arts, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China
- 2Fuzhou University of International Studies and Trade, Fuzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
With the deep integration of artificial intelligence technology in the field of education, educational agents as an intelligent teaching tool possessing interactive and personalised characteristics have drawn increasing attention for their impact on learning outcomes. This study employs a meta-analysis methodology to systematically synthesise 52 empirical investigations published in internationally authoritative journals between 2015 and 2025. It examines the overall effect of educational agents on student learning outcomes, their specific manifestations at cognitive and non-cognitive levels, and the influence of moderating variables such as types of agents, subjects, sample size, and academic level. Findings indicate that educational agents exert a significant positive influence on student learning outcomes. Regarding cognitive abilities, they demonstrate moderate to substantial enhancement effects on creative thinking, academic performance, and communication skills, while their impact on spatial ability and problem-solving skills falls below statistical significance. Regarding non-cognitive abilities, learning motivation and learning attitude showed significant enhancement, whereas the effects on learning engagement and learning interest were smaller and non-significant. Moderation analyses indicated that the impact of educational agents was particularly pronounced among chatbots, universities, small-scale settings, and engineering technology disciplines. This study reveals limitations in educational agents' cultivation of complex abilities and personalised adaptation, providing empirical evidence for their precise application and optimised design.
Keywords: cognitive abilities, Educational agents, learning outcomes, Meta-analysis, Non-cognitive abilities
Received: 17 Sep 2025; Accepted: 12 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Xu, Cao and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xin Cao
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.