  Virtual companions that interact with users in a socially complex environment
require a wide range of social skills. Displaying curiosity is simultaneously a
factor to improve a companion's believability and to unobtrusively affect the
user's activities over time. Curiosity represents a drive to know new things.
It is a major driving force for engaging learners in active learning. Existing
research work pays little attention in curiosity. In this paper, we enrich the
social skills of a virtual companion by infusing curiosity into its mental
model. A curious companion residing in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to
stimulate user's curiosity is proposed. The curious companion model is
developed based on multidisciplinary considerations. The effectiveness of the
curious companion is demonstrated by a preliminary field study.
