Avatars in elearning: Helpful? Annoying?
Research seems to indicate that avatars–animated guides–can help learners. For example, research suggests that we work harder to understand things when we feel like we’re conversing with a person–a person with a personality. Say, like this guy:
Click him to see him in action on California’s Flex Power site. He’s more of a game show host than an avatar, but he shows what enough money can accomplish. But what are the options for the rest of us?
You might be able to set up a customizable avatar, so your learners can choose their instructor. This avatar was a popular engineering instructor in a study by Florida State University’s Research of Innovative Technologies for Learning (via Karl Kapp):
Cheaper avatars
Most of us don’t have that much money. So we fall back on simple cartoons, such as the animated Herman the Bug that appeared to improve students’ performance in transfer tests as much as 48 percent, as described in e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer.
Or we might go with one of the less expensive avatars now being offered for corporate elearning, like Noah. Here’s one incarnation of Noah in an online course:
To see him in action, go to the Noah examples page and click “Noah as a virtual instructor.”
Should an avatar act as a presenter?
Noah didn’t get a warm reception on the eLearning Dev discussion list recently. For example, people felt he made the course too much like an instructor-led PowerPoint presentation. However, the developers of Noah intended him to recreate instructor-led techniques, as they explain here (will resize your window).
The motive behind avatars is to personalize a course–to increase its “human” qualities and create a sense of relationship. This is what Noah’s developers want, too. A big question is whether this human interest is best provided by a one-way presenter.
A few thoughts:
- I’m a big fan of learner control. Noah doesn’t seem to be so keen on the idea. While I think such detailed guidance can help in some situations, it doesn’t seem necessary in the sample course.
- Noah can’t take questions, at least not in the sample provided. Most avatars I’ve seen don’t answer questions.
- A little avatar that moves around on the screen could be as distracting as it might be helpful.
- The sample course that Noah presents has potential for more human interest–but in the fictional sales reps. The course could be redesigned to let the sales reps speak more and drop a lot of the text and instruction. (Whether sales skills are best taught through an online course is a question for another time.)
What do you think?
What do you think about Noah? And what’s the best role for this kind of avatar?
P.S. Apologies to the feed readers who might see some repeated posts as I continue to work out some glitches. Thanks for your patience.
on August 30th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
My initial reaction? The intensity of loathing people had for Clippy, Microsoft’s animated-paperclip Help avatar — the Jar-Jar Binks of the software world. One memorable satire showed a Word screen, with Clippy popping up to say “Looks like you’re planning to kill yourself. Office Assistant can help you write your suicide note…”
True, Noah isn’t Clippy, but the sample in the explanation link doesn’t fill me with optimism. I found myself annoyed by Beard Guy’s flitting about the stage. Moving around doesn’t make a presentation interesting any more than writing with a quill pen makes the output “Hamlet.”
To say nothing of: why a stage? Why yet another embodiment of the classroom model?
The depressing part of this is that some potential decision-makers (who of course won’t have to sit through the eventual training) may find this looks like a graphical version of their treasured, little-corporate-schoolhouse model.
In skimming the Stanford study cited by NOAH, I see it says in part that interactivity depends on the user’s ability to frequently modify content based on the user’s input in real time, through a range of responses.
If you can manage that in your online learning, you might not need to bother much with a virtual toad that hops around the screen, unless your learners work for The Hopping Toad (and maybe especially not then). I’m not convinced that “click me to hear about this page” adds much value for the learner over “click to learn what’s on this page.”
Because, you know, if I can’t tell what’s on the page without clicking, perhaps the page needs a redesign.
on August 31st, 2007 at 10:45 am
I had similar concerns–especially the fact that rather than overhaul a less-than-fascinating information dump, they added a little non-interactive presenter that just reinforced the information-dumpness of it all.
Thanks for pointing out the Stanford paper, which I had missed. It repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the character’s ability to interact with users. This could be as simple as having the character ask a multiple-choice question, but I didn’t see that in the sample course.
Another concern I had is that the tiny guy in the suit didn’t show any emotion other than businesslike pleasantness. Most avatars I’ve seen are emotion-free and some are downright robotic. They don’t add much human interest and can even be creepy. I was slightly creeped out by the tiny guy, though I understood his creators’ intent.
on August 31st, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Maybe you’ve seen this already, but there’s been a lot of discussion of this phenomenon in recent years among (who else) video gamers.
In about 2004, Clive Thomson started writing about the “Uncanny Valley” … from a Slate article by Thomson:
See article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2102086/
Fascinating stuff.
on September 2nd, 2007 at 11:02 am
Jon, thanks for the link to that Slate article. It was fascinating and a timely reminder for me, as I start playing with Poser to try to give elearning characters some personality. I think staying away from animation could help, since it’s especially hard to show movement realistically.
on September 3rd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
[...] Avatars in elearning: Helpful? Annoying? [...]
on September 5th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I’m glad I revisited — Jon’s post, and Cathy’s reply, remind me of something I learned from Lynn Kearny. I saw her demonstrate Graphics for Presenters (also a book she wrote, encouraging us text-linear types to address the other half of the brain.
One idea I’ve used often is the “star person.” Draw a five-pointed star, with the bottom arms elongated and the top one quite short. Plop a circle on that top arm, and you’ve got a person who looks “fuller” than a stick man. After you’ve done one, you can do twenty others in different poses.
The point is that the graphic or the avatar should enhance and advance the message. When the avatar becomes the message, you have Colonel Sanders.
on December 18th, 2007 at 9:55 am
[...] uma vez se referindo a um interesante artigo da Cathy Moore, transcrevo aqui algumas considerações sobre uso de personagens no elearning. [...]
on February 15th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
This is all very enlightening. I’ve been thinking a little avatar presenter would spice up our eLearning, but not after reading this blog. Actually, I was thinking of using miniature video clips of our actual presenters, not fictitious avatars. Sort of like pitches on TV for the next show to be aired.
on March 19th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
[...] Following yet another trail of links, I came to Cathy Moore’s post about online-learning avatars. [...]
on May 6th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I’m with the NOAH people. Interesting feedback, but the NOAH technology is a tool, not an end product. It’s only as good as the people using it. We’ve seen customers use NOAH with outstanding success, and we’ve seen people use it as little more than annoying paperclips. It is ENTIRELY up to the creativity of the developer to utitilize the flexibitily and power of NOAH to best advange. Like Word, I guess: you can write a great novel, or a crappy one. Depends on the author.
on May 29th, 2008 at 12:57 am
As an experienced online developer and animator I have resarched and tried using the these avatars with real audio narration and text-to-audio systems..
My conclusion is that they improve leanring because of the AUDIO with GRAPHIC method. That is where two communication channels are used simulatenously (like video/audio) whch is better than text alone.
It’s not better learning because a cute character bounces around on stage: an arrow can do that. Acharacter is a distractor from the content.
Cute characters take programming time to develop. Better use your time to make the content and course better designed.
on June 19th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I’m looking for character images for my website presentation. Really great looking people for my tutorials.
Please advise.
on June 20th, 2008 at 10:13 am
If you’re just looking for still images of people, I’d recommend one of the microstock sites, such as iStockPhoto.
on June 28th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Another interesting source of still images and related resources is http://www.narratorfiles.com
on October 14th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
To put it bluntly, I think Avatars are annoying. I also think videos with “talking heads” are annoying. If they are just preaching to you, then it may as well just be text. Avatars need to serve a purpose.
If you want there to interest in the eLearning, make the “avatar” a customer, or a co-worker, or someone you might interact with on the job. Then go through a series of discussions or challenges with the avatar customer. Maybe you can get points on if you make the sale, or receive realistic feedback.
Avatars should never be hosts. But I think they can be featured if they are in a story, or a scenario, or some type of true interaction to make things interesting for the user.