Embodied Pedagogical Agents: From Visual Impact to Pedagogical Implications

Författare

Magnus Haake

Summary, in English

Embodied pedagogical agents – visually represented, computer generated characters

in pedagogical roles, such as virtual instructors, mentors and learning companions

– populate the digital society in increasing numbers. They are found

in educational programmes from preschool to university, as well as in broader

educational contexts in the form of medical counsellors, virtual health coaches,

information guides, etc. Since long, they also appear in edutainment and infotainment

settings.

The thesis addresses psychological, cognitive and social aspects of embodied

virtual characters in pedagogical contexts with respect to ‘static visual characteristics’,

i.e. underlying visual characteristics. On the basis of theoretical considerations

as well as several empirical studies, it is argued that users’ visual and

aesthetic experience of embodied pedagogical characters (EPCs) is too important

to be treated as a secondary issue – not the least with respect to central pedagogical

goals to motivate and engage.

The main conclusions of the thesis are: (i) that visual aspects in EPCs can

be related to pedagogical outcomes, (ii) that there may be significant relations

between visual and social characteristics of EPCs and learner characteristics, and

(iii) that EPCs may reproduce stereotypes from everyday real life human-human

interaction, as well as from traditional visual media – but that they simultaneously

harbour a considerable potential to challenge stereotypes.

As a tool for the research community, a framework of a visual graphical design

space is proposed. The framework may scaffold the design of user evaluations,

which often are blurred by uncontrolled visually related variables. With regard to

weak user evaluations, the thesis furthermore argues that there is a problem with

user evaluations based upon the concept of ‘the User’, i.e. an averaged standardized

user. In order to reveal important correlations between agent characteristics

and user characteristics, it is often necessary to identify relevant subgroups of

users rather than to treat the whole user group as an ‘averaged user’.

And finally – virtual agents may have a not yet thought of potential as research

tools …

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