The Effect Of Emotional Peer Agency On Multimedia Learning

With the progress of educational technology,computer-based multimedia teaching has penetrated into students’ learning and educational life,how to improve learners’learning in multimedia teaching environment,teaching interaction,emotional experience and learning effect is now a hot spot for researchers to focus on,teaching agents into the research vision of researchers,adding human-like teaching agents can help students feel social cues in multimedia teaching environment.Peer agents allow students to be motivated to feel companionship in a multimedia teaching environment.How to design a qualified teaching agent to help learning in multimedia learning environment,this study designs the agent from the perspective of emotional design from two aspects:external features and internal features,firstly,on the external features:based on previous studies,a 3D peer agent is designed in terms of facial expressions and voice to investigate the effect of emotional peer agent on learners’ emotional experience,cognitive load(intrinsic cognitive load,extrinsic cognitive load,and related cognitive load).learning motivation,and learning effectiveness(retention and transfer).Secondly,in terms of internal characteristics:the role of different ability agents on learners with different prior knowledge experiences in multimedia learning was examined.A one-way between-subjects design was used in Experiment 1.One hundred and thirteen college students(24 male)subjects were selected and randomly assigned to four conditions:positive peer agent group(smiling expression,enthusiastic voice),neutral peer agent group(neutral expression,calm voice),positive voice group(enthusiastic voice),and neutral voice group(calm voice).Results revealed that adding peer agents increased learners’ motivation,allowed learners to experience less intrinsic cognitive load as well as increased relevant cognitive load,and peer agents increased learners’ transfer performance.Positive emotion peer agency allows learners to focus more on important learning content.Experiment 2 used a two-factor between-subjects design,2(positive emotion peer agency ability:high vs.low)x 2(prior knowledge level:high vs.low),and 97 college students(20 males)subjects were selected and randomly assigned to four groups according to their prior knowledge experience to explore the effect of peer agency at different ability levels on learners with different prior knowledge levels in the positive emotion peer agency condition.In the multimedia learning environment,learners with high prior knowledge experience were more adapted to the learning environment with positive affect peer teaching agents,had higher positive affect and lower negative affect,experienced lower extrinsic and intrinsic cognitive load,higher relevant cognitive load,and higher retention transfer performance compared to learners with low prior knowledge experience.Overall,the inclusion of peer agents allowed learners to experience less intrinsic cognitive load and higher related cognitive load,and improved their motivation and transfer performance.Learners with high prior knowledge experience experienced better emotions in the positive affect peer agent system,experienced lower extrinsic and intrinsic cognitive load,higher extrinsic cognitive load,and performed better on retention and transfer performance on posttest.better performance on posttest retention and transfer scores.This study validates the emotional agent theory as well as the anthropomorphic effect and provides ideas for the design of future multimedia emotional agents.