• Educational Technology International
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.61-91
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• 2018

The animated pedagogical agent has been implemented to promote learning outcomes and motivation in multimedia learning. It has been claimed that one of the advantages of using pedagogical agent is persona effect - the personalization or social presence of pedagogical agent can enhance learning engagement and motivation. However, prior research is inconclusive as to whether and how the features of the pedagogical agent have effects on the persona effect. This study investigated whether the similarity between a pedagogical agent and the real instructor in terms of the voice and outlook would improve students' perception of the agent's persona. The study also examined the effect by the size of pedagogical agent on the persona perception. Two experiments were conducted with a total of 115 college students. Experiment 1 indicated a significant main effect of voice on the persona perception. Experiment 2 was conducted to examine whether the size of pedagogical agent would affect the voice effect on the persona perception. The results showed that the instructor-like voice yielded higher persona perception regardless of the pedagogical agent's size. Overall, the study findings indicated that the similarity in voice positively fostered the agent's persona.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.47-56
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to test the effect of pedagogical agent realism and expertise on persona effect. There were two perspectives of the pedagogical agents' social interaction. Self-identification hypothesis argues that complexity of agent image is better to increase social interaction. Subjective identification insists that simplified image is more helpful to facilitate social interaction. However, from the cognitive load theory perspective, learners' expertise can be a major factor to determine persona effect. Sixty-eight college students (male=19 and female=49) participated. The independent variables were the degree of realism of pedagogical agent (detailed vs. simplified image) and the expertise (high prior knowledge group vs. low prior knowledge group). The dependant variables were comprehension test and the agent persona instrument (API). There was no significant difference in comprehension test score; however, there were significant interaction effect on the most constructs of API: 1) facilitating of learning, 2) credible, and 3) human-like. The follow-up analysis of simple main effect revealed that high expertise group showed significantly higher perception of the three construct with high realism of pedagogical agent. The results of study show that learners' expertise plays a key role of perception of persona effect.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.281-292
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of gesture and facial expression on persona effects. Fifty-six college students were recruited for this study, and non-verbal communication skills were applied to a pedagogical agent with gesture (conversational vs. deictic) and facial expression. The conversational gesture may have relationship with social interaction hypothesis of pedagogical agent while the deictic gesture may have relationship with attentional guidance hypothesis. The facial expression can be assumed to facilitate the social interaction between the pedagogical agent and learners. Interestingly, the conversational gesture group showed a tendency of outperforming the deictic gesture group. It may imply that the social interaction theory has a strong impact on cognitive support as well as social interaction for learners. There was a significant interaction effect on the engagement when both of facial expression and conversational gesture were applied. This result has two implications. First, facial expression can facilitate the persona effect for engagement.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.55-64
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to identify how realism of pedagogical agent can have impacts on persona effect and cognitive load factors. Eighty-two college students participated, and the independent variables of this study were the degree of image details and presence of gesture. The degree of image details were picture, illustration, and line-drawing. The $3{\times}2$ factorial design was applied. There was a significant interaction effect on the engaging of agent persona instrument. When the learners were under the condition of line-drawing agent without gesture, they showed the highest score on engaging of the agent persona instrument. Regarding the cognitive load factors, when learners under the condition of line-drawing showed the highest score of self-evaluation.