Effectiveness of Digital Avatars in Student Engagement and Learning

With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, students have reported that online classes not only lack effective teaching practices, but there is also an absence of the collaborative learning aspect that provides students with the ability to have quality interactions with one another and stay engaged (Dumford & Miller, 2018). The purpose of the current study was to assess the efficacy of animated and digital human avatars in comparison to traditional instructors in lecture videos. Data from 58 participants were analyzed. Participants were instructed to watch a total of four 4–7 min instructional videos and answer comprehension questions. The four videos in each condition consisted of two “Easy” Content and two “Hard” Content videos with the respective instructor type in that condition. After viewing a video, participants were asked to rate how much mental effort they devoted to understanding the information presented, and fill out questionnaires about their perceived engagement, trust in the avatar, and perceived usability of the instructional video. The results showed participants scored higher on the quizzes when the video content was hard than when it was easy. Participants also scored higher on the quiz when the video was presented with the human professor than the digital human professor. These results suggest that students may be more engaged, and as a result, showed higher quiz scores with the videos when the topic is more complex or when a human professor was present.