The effects of animated agents on students' achievement and attitudes

Abstract

Animated agents are electronic agents that interact with learners through voice, visuals or text and that carry human-like characteristics such as gestures and facial expressions with the purpose of creating a social learning environment, and provide information and guidance and when required feedback and motivation to students during their learning experience. The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of the use of pedagogical agents in learning materials designed in multimedia on the achievement and attitudes of students. A general evaluation of the research findings indicate that the use of multimedia software developed by using pedagogical agents positively affects student achievement and attitude. The achievement of the students who worked with the software significantly increased, but no significant difference in terms of different pedagogical agents was observed. The comparison of the student's attitudes revealed no significant difference in terms of different pedagogical agents, yet the attitudes regarding "bearing human features" showed positively significant difference for the software with body shot of a real person. As it is seen in the unstructured interviews with the participants conducted during and after the experimental process, it should be stated that the students had positive attitudes towards the software and the use of pedagogical agent and expressed their liking.