Pedagogical Agents in Educational VR: An in the Wild Study

Gustav Bøg Petersen, Aske Mottelson, Guido Makransky

Research output: Conference Article in Proceeding or Book/Report chapterArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Pedagogical agents are theorized to increase humans’ effort to understand computerized instructions. Despite the pedagogical promises of VR, the usefulness of pedagogical agents in VR remains uncertain. Based on this gap, and inspired by global efforts to advance remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted an educational VR study in-the-wild (N = 161). With a 2 2 + 1 between subjects design, we manipulated the appearance and behavior of a virtual museum guide in an exhibition about viruses. Factual and conceptual learning outcomes as well as subjective learning experience measures were collected. In general, participants reported high enjoyment and had significant knowledge acquisition. We found that the agent’s appearance and behavior impacted factual knowledge gain. We also report an interaction effect between behavioral and visual realism for conceptual knowledge gain. Our findings nuance classical multimedia learning theories and provide directions for employing agents in immersive learning environments.
Original languageUndefined/Unknown
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Place of PublicationNew York, NY, USA
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Publication date2021
ISBN (Print)9781450380966
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Pedagogical Agents
  • Virtual Reality
  • Remote Learning
  • Knowledge Acquisition
  • Interactive Learning Environments

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