Despite its disadvantages, e-learning is becoming more and more popular in organizational and educational settings. Therefore, researchers are beginning to explore ways that can help trainees benefit from all of e-learning’s many advantages. Recent research (Behrend & Thompson, 2010) offers one avenue for helping trainees get the most out of e-learning: the use of intelligent agents, which act as virtual tutors to trainees. When intelligent agents are created to posses human attributes, they are known as animated pedagogical agents (APAs). Although some existing research supports the use of APAs, the authors of this study were interested in how training outcomes were affected by the physical appearance of APAs, the personality of APAs, and the feedback offered by APAs.
RESEARCH RESULTS
In their study, the intelligent agent was named PJ and while some trainees were given control over what PJ looked liked and acted like, others were not. Indeed, the researchers found that trainees do benefit from making choices about what PJ looks like. That is, control over appearance positively impacted trainee self-efficacy, or the belief that they can succeed. However, trainees who were given control over what kind of feedback PJ gave to them had lower post-training self-efficacy than trainees who were given no control over this aspect. Finally, control over PJ’s personality (humorous versus unemotional) had no effect on training outcomes.
ADDITIONAL FINDINGS
Interestingly, although the researchers expected that trainees would report being more satisfied with the training course when given more control over the characteristics of PJ, no such effects were found. Moreover, control versus no control had no effect on how engaged trainees were during training. Finally (and perhaps most importantly), participants who were given control over multiple characteristics of PJ (appearance, personality, and feedback type) tended to learn more from the training course than learners with fewer choices (no choice or choice over only one characteristics of PJ).
Behrend, T.S., & Thompson, L.F. (2010). Trainee-trainer similarity in e-learning: Effects with computerized trainers. Paper presented at the 25th annual meeting of the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology.
Subsequent publication by these authors: Behrend, T. S., & Thompson, L. F. (2011). Similarity effects in online training: Effects with computerized trainer agents. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(3), 1201–1206.
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