Comparing Human Versus Avatar Instructors of Different Ethnicities: Effects on Student Learning Outcomes Using a Virtual Learning Platform

The process of education is changing in the modern world with an increased emphasis on e-learning environments that employ avatar agents as teachers. As such it is unclear how avatars compare to human instructors in online learning platforms in metrics such as comprehension, trust, usability, mental effort and engagement. 110 students were recruited to assess the effect on these metrics in an asynchronized online learning study to compare human instructors with avatar instructors and include African -American, Asian, Hispanic and White representations for each of the manipulations. We overall found no statistically significant effect for comprehension nor any of the metrics apart from the interaction between ethnicity and instructor type on trust scores. We discussed potential reasons for this and suggested further studies.