Although research is quite new, most documents I read support a conversational style of writing (using 1st and 2nd person language) and the use of an onscreen character to help guide the learning process – the thinking being that this helps learners engage with the computer as a social partner. (Remember Tom Hanks in the film Cast Away where he plays a FedEx employee stranded on an island and befriends a volleyball to keep him company? We all want a friend!)
Assuming you write sufficiently informal so that learners feel they are interacting but no so informally that it’s distracting or the material is undermined (know your audience!) it’s believed we make more sense of material presented this way.
Regarding the use of coaches/avatars, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between using real characters or cartoon characters. In fact, the image of a character does not always need to be present as long as learners can hear their voice – what’s important is that they sound conversational rather than a machine-simulated voice. In addition, coaches should be used to provide instruction rather than for entertainment purposes.
In summary, coaches:
- Do seem to serve a valid instructional purpose
- Can be visually realistic or cartoon-like
- Work best when their dialogue is presented via audio narration (natural and conversational)
No comments:
Post a Comment