Poster #20 - Effects of Gesture by Pedagogical Agents in Multimedia Learning

• In Event: 64.090 - MTCC Poster Session 15
  In Poster Session: 64.090-3 - Sight, Sound, and Touch: Presentation Variations for Educational Technology

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that students learn better from an online lesson when a gesturing pedagogical agent is added. The goal of this study is to pinpoint which aspect of a gesturing pedagogical agent causes an improvement in learning from an online lesson. College students learned about neural transmission in an online multimedia lesson that included a pedagogical agent who displayed specific pointing gestures, general pointing gestures, non-pointing gestures, or no gestures. We found that students in the specific-pointing group paid more attention to task-related elements and also performed better on retention and transfer tests than the other groups. The results show that an active ingredient in effective pedagogical agents is the use of specific pointing gestures.

Authors

• Fuxing Wang, Central China Normal University

• Wenjing Li, Central China Normal University

• Richard E. Mayer, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Huashan Liu