A Study of the Effects of Teaching Avatars on Students' Learning of Surveying Mathematics

2. Teaching Avatars

Computer-animated characters, also called embodied agents or avatars, have been used in interactive computer interfaces to communicate information through speech, facial expressions and body gestures. Animated avatars have been incorporated into general information systems, for instance to read the news, present tourist information, and discuss book reviews, e.g. Jack (Noma et al., 2000) and PPP Persona (Andre et al., 1996). They have also been used in e-commerce applications to advertise and sell products and in e-learning environments to teach and supervise. Early examples of pedagogical avatars are Cosmo (Lester et al., 1997) a cosmonaut who explains how the internet works, Herman a bug-like creature that teaches children about biology, and STEVE (Johnson & Rickel, 1998), who trains users in operating complex machinery using speech, pointing gestures, and gaze behavior. In Virtual Human project (Reithinger et al., 2006) a virtual teacher gives astronomy lessons by following different pedagogical paradigms and shows a variety of nonverbal behaviors that reflect different parameterized personality settings.