The Case for Social Agency in Computer-Based Teaching: Do Students Learn More Deeply When They Interact With Animated Pedagogical Agents?

TLDR: The authors found that students who participate in the design of plant parts remember more and transfer what they have learned to solve new problems better than students who learn the same materials without participation, regardless of whether the agent's words were presented as speech or on-screen text.

Abstract: College students (in Experiment 1) and 7th-grade students (in Experiment 2) learned how to design the roots, stem, and leaves of plants to survive in 8 different environments through a computer-based multimedia lesson They learned by interacting with an animated pedagogical agent who spoke to them (Group PA) or received identical graphics and explanations as on-screen text without a pedagogical agent (Group No PA) Group PA outperformed Group No PA on transfer tests and interest ratings but not on retention tests To investigate further the basis for this personal agent effect, we varied the interactivity of the agent-based lesson (Experiment 3) and found an interactivity effect: Students who participate in the design of plant parts remember more and transfer what they have learned to solve new problems better than students who learn the same materials without participation Next, we varied whether the agent's words were presented as speech or on-screen text, and whether the agent's image appeared on the