The effects of seductive augmentation and agent role on learning interest, achievement, and attitude

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of seductive augmentation and agent role on learning interest, achievement, and attitude in pedagogical agent supported learning. 127 college undergraduate students enrolled in "Computer literacy" classes at a large public university in the United States participated in this study. Students were randomly assigned to one of the eight treatment groups based on the sequence of their arrival to the research lab. The two independent variables were seductive graphics and the source of seductive messages. Seductive graphics contained two levels of variables: presence of seductive graphics and absence of seductive graphics. The source of seductive messages included four levels: companion agent, instructor agent, text without agent, and no message. Two agents (an instructor role of agent and a companion role of agent) were implemented to examine the agent effect. The three dependent variables were post interest, achievement, and attitude toward the learning material. A pilot test was conducted to determine the level of students' prior knowledge about "intellectual property." The topic of the instructional material used in this study was "Introduction to the intellectual property." In this material, three main concepts of intellectual property; patents, trademarks, and copyrights were explained in detail. A two way between-groups MANOVA was performed to find the main effect of the two independent variables for two dependent variables, learning interest and attitude. In addition, a two-way between-groups ANOVA was conducted to examine the effects of seductive graphics and the source of seductive messages on the number of recalled keywords and comprehension test. In order to find the effect of specific agent role, the mean scores of the dependent variables for the companion agent role condition and instructor agent role condition were compared. The results indicated that the use of seductive graphics and seductive messages was effective to improve learner's attention to the learning material in terms of learning interest, and also learner's attitude, especially relevance scores. However, no significant difference was found for the recall test and the comprehension test. The two different agent roles did not make any differences on the three dependent variables. The primary contribution of this study is twofold. First, the results of this study illuminate the concept of learning interest as it concerns seductive augmentation. Especially, unlike the previous studies, the result of this study shows how seductive augmentation could affect three sub components of situational interest: attention, arousal, and involvement. Second, this study generalized the use of seductive augmentation in a multimedia learning context where a pedagogical agent is present. One of the strategies employed in this study to promote learner's interest was seductive messages delivered by a pedagogical agent. It was found that students tend to believe and remember more when the message is delivered by agents. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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