The Effect Of Animated Pedagogical Agent In Multimedia Learning:The Role Of Learner Characteristic And Learning Material

With the development of computer technology, animated pedagogical agent (APA) are more and more applied in multimedia learning. APA have internal and external properties. Internal property refers to that it can provide learners with guidance, feedback, and make cooperative learning. External property refers to its visual presentation, namely agent image, which is a highly visual anthropomorphic figure. Agent image is usually presented on the computer screen. It can convey non-verbal behavior information through gestures, facial expressions and other actions, thus help establish social ties between the learner and the computer, creating a funny learning environment.However, previous studies have found that pedagogical agent image can’t facilitate learning under all conditions. Researchers speculated that the APA effect is affected by learners’ characteristics and learning environment. Learners’ characteristics include learners’ preference for agent image and learner’s prior knowledge. Different learners may prefer different image, and only learners’ preferential image may enhance their learning; Learners with different levels of knowledge have different cognitive patterns. Learners with high prior knowledge mainly adopt top-down processing, while learners with low prior knowledge mainly adopt bottom-up processing. What is more, the effect of APA may be affected by the materials’ degree of difficulty for the reason that complex learning materials will affect learners’ cognitive load. According to the social agency theory, when learning a complex material, the APA can motivate learners to take advantage of deep cognitive processing strategies and improve their performance. For a simple material, which also needs less learners’ cognitive effort, the effect of APA is weak. Besides, the cognitive processes and attention allocation are also different with different learners and materials.Basing on the studies above, the current study aims to explore whether the APA has influence on learners’cognitive processes and performances in non-interactive multimedia learning environment and whether the effect of APA is affected by learners’individual characters and material complexity. The first study is to explore the influences of learners’ characteristic on APA effect, This study included two experiments:Experiment1is to examine whether learners’ preference for agent have influence on agent image effect. A3instructional conditions (preference group, no preference group, no agent group) between participants design was adopted. The results indicated as follows: learners in the preference group performed better on transfer test, had lower cognitive load and perceived lower difficulty of the questionnaire than no preference group. And learners in the preference group had more fixation counts and high fixation frequency than the other groups. But the eye movement patterns on preference group and no agent group had no difference. The results suggested that learners’ preference for agent images moderated the effect of pedagogical agent image on multimedia learning.Experiment2is to examine the impact of learners’ prior knowledge on agent image effect. A2(learner’s prior knowledge level:high, low)×2instructional condition (agent group, no agent group) between participants design was adopted. The results indicated as follows:low prior knowledge learner in the agent group performed better on transfer test and had higher learning efficiency, while high prior knowledge learner in the agent group and no agent group had no significant difference. And high prior knowledge learner had less glance counts in the agent image and learning content than the low prior knowledge learners.The second study aims to explore the influence of learning material characteristic on the effect of APA. A2(learning material complexity:complex, simple)×2instructional condition (agent group, no agent group) between participants design was adopted. The results indicated as follows:for complex material, learners had better transfer test scores and higher learning efficiency and perceived lower difficulty of the questionnaire. But for simple material, learners’ learning outcomes in the agent group and no agent group had no significant difference, and learners’ had smaller saccade amplitude average than the other groups..Above all, this research combined post-tests with eye movement data and found that: First, learners can achieve better learning outcomes when learners preferred for the image, and had more glance counts in the agent image and learning content, which suggested that learners put more mental effort to learn the material and processed deeply; Second, the effect of agent image in multimedia learning is affected by learners’ prior knowledge and the results further indicated that agent image was more efficient for learners with low prior knowledge in multimedia learning, but was no efficient for learners with high prior knowledge. For high prior knowledge, they paid more attention to learning content; Third, the effect of agent image in multimedia learning is affected by the complexity of learning material, and it can be shown that agent image was more efficient for complex material, but was no efficient for simple material. For simple material, learner had better learning outcomes and higher processing efficiency of the learning material, and the APA hindered learning outcomes to a certain extent.Finally, we summarized the theoretical implications and practical values of the research. Then, the limitations of the present work are discussed and the future directions are provided.