Digital Avatars in Education

According to Manninen (2007), the main difference between virtual worlds and the physical one is the need for an avatar to act as a representation of your physical self. An example of these avatar-mediated virtual world is Second Life, described by NBC News as “a 3-D online virtual world where avatars do the kind of stuff real people do in real life” (Kalning, 2007, para. 2). Within these virtual worlds, avatars are the digitally visible persona of the computer user, designed to enhance interaction within the virtual world (Falloon, 2010). Here, avatars become proxies for users' communication with other users or objects within the virtual world.

In education technologies, digital avatars are used as agents of pedagogy, agents of motivation, or as a representation of learners in an immersive environment. 

As pedagogical agents, avatars function as coaches, guiding the student through course content and adapting instruction to the learning style of the student (Blake & Moseley, 2010; Cook et al., 2016). For example, students who observed gesturing avatar coaches in maths learned more and solved problems faster (Cook et al., 2016). 

As agents of motivation for learners, avatars are noted to improve self-efficacy, engagement and satisfaction, of learners. For example, when customized after the likeness of students, avatars exercising and losing weight have caused a similar result in students offline (Baylor, 2011), also use of age-progressed avatars has led to improvement in long-term financial planning (Freeman & Maloney, 2020).

As representation of students, learners embodying their avatars construct their own learning experiences within immersive virtual environments. For example, medical students, in the university of Nottingham, are put through birthing simulations in Second Life (Blake & Moseley, 2010). A critical feature to ‘avatars as representation of students’ is the access to social interaction. Due to the ability of VR to simulate reality, the potential to build relationships in a virtual world, as avatars, is created. Hence, researchers have argued that this social feature encourages effort, discourages nonproductive behavior, and motivates action.

The power of VR to raise learning outcome, as argued by Alhalabi (2019) is in its power of immersion. Others have argued that a second element, in addition to immersion, is required to achieve high learning rates, viz, user interactivity within the VR-environment. Thus, the use of games is suggested as the natural way to achieve high levels of interactivity.

The health crisis caused by the Covid19 pandemic caused an increased interest in remote education. The growth in the global EdTech market is projected to increase 2.5x from 2019 to 2025 (Holon IQ). More so, some researchers and practitioners view the pandemic as a ‘great experiment’ and an opportunity to accelerate the ‘digital transformation’ of education for the future. In a video announcement of the metaverse by Meta’s (formerly Facebook) CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, education was a key focus. It describes the future of learning becoming an immersive experience. It preempts that “by donning glasses or a headset, students could virtually “teleport” to any place or time. They could bring any object – a planet, a human organ, a car engine – to them to learn about it.” Meta also announced a fund of $150M dedicated to building immersive learning content. In response, Kwang Hyung Lee, president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) writing for the Times Higher Education announced:

Here’s a video walkthrough by YouTuber, Devlin Peck, exploring the metaverse and learning:

Reflection

1. Big Media companies and organisations, such as Meta and Fast Company, act as promissory organisations producing future-oriented knowledge. How do you think they will influence the future of technology use in education?