Investigating the impact of pedagogical agent gender matching and learner choice on learning outcomes and perceptions

Abstract

The similarity attraction hypothesis posits that humans are drawn toward others who behave and appear similar to themselves. Two experiments examined this hypothesis with middle school students learning electrical circuit analysis in a computer -based environment with an Animated Pedagogical Agent (APA). Experiment 1 was designed to determine whether matching the gender of the APA to the student has a positive impact on learning outcomes or student perceptions. One hundred ninety-seven middle-school students learned with the computer-based environment using an APA that matched their gender or one which was opposite in gender. Female students reported higher program ratings when the APA matched their gender.Male students, on the other hand, reported higher program ratings than females when the APA did not match their gender. Experiment 2 systematically tested the impact of providing learners the choice among four APAs on learning outcomes and student perceptions. Three hundred thirty-four middle-school students received either a pre-assigned random APA or were free to choose from four APA options: young male agent, older male agent, young female agent, or older female agent. Learners had higher far transfer scores when provided a choice of animated agent, but student perceptions were not impacted by having the ability to make this choice. We suggest that offering students learner control positively impacts student motivation and learning by increasing student perceptions autonomy, responsibility for the success of the instructional materials, and global satisfaction with the design of materials.

Learning from video modeling examples: does gender matter?

“…The latter would have the added benefit of giving students an extra opportunity of regulating their own study behaviour, which should increase feelings of autonomy and thereby possibly raise their motivation and self-efficacy (Bandura 2001;Behrend and Thompson 2012;Clark and Mayer 2011;Ryan and Deci 2000). A similar argument has previously been made in the animated pedagogical agent literature (Ozogul et al 2013). Because the gender of the model in a video modeling example does not seem to affect students' test performance, there seems to be no harm in providing students with the opportunity to choose the gender of their model, although future research should first examine whether our findings are replicated using tasks from other domains and over longer study periods.…”

“…However, other research has shown that when learning an engineering task, often considered a stereotypically male domain in Western countries, interacting with a female model decreased women's beliefs about engineering stereotypes compared to interacting with a male agent (Rosenberg-Kima et al 2008). Moreover, when given the choice, students tend to select an agent of the same gender (Ozogul et al 2013).…”

“…Potential effects of model characteristics that are unrelated to how the learning task is presented, such as gender, on the learning process and learning outcomes, have received little attention in recent research on video modeling examples. However, earlier research inspired by the model-observer similarity hypothesis (Schunk 1987(Schunk , 1991, as well as recent research on pedagogical agents (e.g., Baylor and Kim 2004;Ozogul et al 2013), suggests that similarity in factors such as gender may matter. Building on these findings, which will be reviewed below, the present study examined whether the effectiveness and efficiency of video modeling examples can vary as a function of the observer's and model's gender.…”

A gender matching effect in learning with pedagogical agents in an immersive virtual reality science simulation

“…Although the instructional effectiveness of onscreen pedagogical agents has been a topic of interest for the past 20 years (Cassell, 1Sullivan, Prevost, & Churchill, ; Dehn & van Mulken, ; Heidig & Clarebout, ; W. L. Johnson & Rickel, ; W. L. Johnson & Lester, ; Mayer & DaPra, ; R. Moreno et al, ; Schroeder & Adesope, ; Schroeder, Adesope, & Gilbert, ; Veletsianos & Russell, ; Wang, Li, Mayer, & Liu, ), an important remaining issue concerns how best to render the basic characteristics of the agent, such as gender, ethnicity, and age (Baylor & Kim, ; Hoogerheide, Loyens, & van Gog, ; Hoogerheide, van Mermeskerken, van Nassau, & van Gog, ; Kim & Baylor, ; R. Moreno & Flowerday, ; Ozogul, Johnson, Atkinson, & Reisslein, ; Rosenberg‐Kima, Plant, Doerr, & Baylor, ). Kim and Lim () found that learner gender was a significant factor in the learner's evaluations of a pedagogical agent with females holding more positive attitudes towards agents.…”

The Effects of a Pedagogical Agent’s Smiling Expression on the Learner’s Emotions and Motivation in a Virtual Learning Environment

“…Hence, future research should explore how a learner's demographic, cultural and personality markers may influence his or her perception of an agent's smile. Moreover, as suggested by the same reviewer, the findings of our study should be replicated with different agent designs (i.e., gender, role and ethnicity), in order to associate the effects of an agent's smile with agent properties such as gender (Ozogul, Johnson, Atkinson, & Reisslein, 2013;Wang & Yeh, 2013), stereotype (Liew, Tan, & Jayothisa, 2013;Veletsianos, 2010) and ethnicity (Kim & Wei, 2011;Moreno & Flowerday, 2006). Last but not least, a control group using the voice paired with static images of a smiling agent can be included in future experiments, in order to reinforce the validity of the current findings of this paper.…”