Tag Archives: learning agents

Please Don’t Call Them Avatars… Unless They Are Avatars.

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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The Last Airbender. An avatar.

Here’s the bottom line, readers: I love you. And I don’t want you to get called out by “people who know”. Ya know?

So here are the common definitions for the word avatar:

1. A representation of Vishnu.

2. A personification or embodiment of an ideal. (This is the Avatar: The Last Airbender definition.)

3. A representation of oneself. (This is the James Cameron’s Avatar definition. It also describes a character you control in an online game or virtual world.)

There is very little elearning with avatars by those definitions. A learning agent is not an avatar. Neither are characters in a scenario.

We already have a lot of jargon in our industry that muddies the waters for both solution providers and purchasers. Especially as character packs gain popularity, I’d love to see us have more clarity around this term.

Animated vs. Static Learning Agents – My M.Ed. Capstone Research

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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You never know what’s going to happen when you go to a DevLearn session with Cammy Bean, folks. In her excellent session on Avoiding the Trap of Clicky-Clicky Bling-Bling, someone asked about the value of onscreen characters and Cammy mentioned the research I did for my M.Ed. capstone project this year… which reminded me that I still haven’t shared it here!

So, for regular readership and those who might have wandered here because of that session, here’s the super-short version:

I created two versions of a course with only a slight difference in multimedia, then invited participants to take the course, tracking behind the scenes which participants were given which version. I reported on the differences in:

  • immediate understanding of the content (level 2 for those of you who roll that way)
  • self-reported engagement measures (level 1)
  • LMS-reported engagement measures (whether the learners finished the course, how much they explored the optional areas)

And what aspect of multimedia did I test? I specifically focused on the use of a fully animated learning agent* — one that moves her lips and gestures with her hands — versus a static (image-only) one. And I found no statistically significant difference in positive outcomes. Zero. Zip. Nada. Bupkus.

So basically, if you’re thinking about sinking a lot of development time or money into developing fully animated learning agents in hopes of increasing engagement or retention, I think this is research that you will want to read. Some vendors of those tools distribute research that others have done, supporting the use of learning agents in some situations, but nowhere in my background research or in this project did I find evidence that animation — lip synchronization, hand gestures, body movements — increases positive outcomes.

You can read the full report here, and I would love to receive your feedback, comments, and questions below.

* A learning agent, also called an animated pedagogical agent (and sometimes dubiously called an avatar), is a character that guides the learner through the course, somewhat like a teacher, although learning agents can be interactive or merely multimedia. 

“Learning Agent” Characters in Lectora X.5

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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E-Learning Uncovered logoNow on the E-Learning Uncovered blog: my review of the additions in Lectora X.5.

Of particular note to onehundredfortywords readers, I believe, are the new functionality and media for characters/learning agents. In short: The new functionality is pretty cool, but the included characters leave much to be desired.

Beth and the Mermaid

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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A quick look at some new images that have come onto the elearning scene recently*:

"The perfect elearning host" according CS. I concur.

Cheers: Cartoon Solutions has released Beth, a smart-looking, non-Barbie™-proportioned character that’s great for learning agents. I have to admit, though I’ve used their art in the past, sometimes I’ve changed the body proportions to be more realistic. The marketing behind Beth shows that Cartoon Solutions is paying attention to its elearning audience.

She's not bad... she's just drawn that way.

Jeers: Trivantis included a — sorry to say — salaciously drawn mermaid in the Lectora X media library. Can’t say I’ll find much use for this in elearning… even if I needed a mermaid, I wouldn’t opt for Jessica Rabbit’s long-lost oceanic kin. And that’s a pity because elearning is Trivantis’s whole business. That being the case, it’s pretty disappointing to find something this off-the-mark. Hat tip: Marc Shecter.

*Wordpress tells me I started this blog post almost three months ago. I haven’t posted it because I’ve had an issue with Lectora X’s media library on my company’s network… not Trivantis’s fault from what I can tell, but it’s taken some time to get resolved, and I wanted to be able to say that in all fairness, the rest of the media library is at least work-appropriate. It is, and otherwise I’m pretty darn keen on Lectora X’s improvements. :)

…And Finally, Learning Agents Part 6: Get Your Own (Using Illustrations)

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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Illustrations deserve their own discussion; they’re my recommendation because they’re highly editable.

Angela, one of our recent stars. $18 for her files and 100% worth it.

Angela, one of our recent stars. $18 for her files and 100% worth it.

You can use clipart (and if you do, check out Tom Kuhlman’s now-classic post on clipart editing). For learning agents, though, one or two on-screen personas get a lot of focus and need to represent a wide range of behaviors, so clipart may not cut it.

For my money/time, I buy pre-made illustrations. The regular stock photo sites have illustrations, but the best collection I’ve found for learning agents is cartoonsolutions.com.

Most of their characters are elearning-appropriate and they come with various poses and mouths (meant to animate speech, but I also use them as facial expressions). I buy Flash versions and use Illustrator to edit them for stills. Add audio from a popular CSR, and you’re golden.

I’m still looking for more collections — any recommendations?