I would prefer to learn from multimedia design, version, 2. With the presence of the pedagogical agents, it incorporates images, interesting conversations and movements in the multimedia presentation. This makes the presentation interesting and will make me want to know more of the content. In addition, it will provides a more lasting impression as compared to the presentation without the agents.
The first constraint for incorporating the agents will be the synthetic voice projected from the agents. The voice may be unclear at times but it can be compensated by increasing the volume or to review that page again. And second constraint will be that the creator must be equipped with technical skills in order to incorporate the agents effectively.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with your points. :)
ReplyDeleteAs a student, I will find the agent interesting initially due to the novelty factor; but as a teacher, I definitely think that it is not worth investing the time and effort to incorporate the agent into my lessons.
Programming the agent to carry out its teaching task effectively is an extremely time consuming task, even for a teacher equipped with the required technical skills. It could take a few hours to program the agent and to sync it to the Powerpoint - all just for a short 3 minute presentation which is specific to a certain topic and cannot be reused.
Well, it is true that the agents make for a more "colorful" presentation, but I reckon we have to consider the audience of our presentation a little more before thinking about using these agents. Just a note to add with regards to the second constraint you mentioned. I agree with what both you and Grace say in that one would need specific skills in order to incorporate the agents and further to that, it takes quite a bit of time and effort scripting a short presentation.
ReplyDeleteDear Harman and Grace, both of you are right. What you have said was in fact the issues of affordances and constraints which we discussed in class. In design, we will need refer these two factors in terms of the context which in this case, is the suitability of the agents used under the online environment for the topic of multimedia design principles. So the discussion has to be linked to the said context for it to make sense. You also brought up a very relevant issue, the Return-of-Investment (ROI), something the agent community has always argued about. This is not an isolated case, similar to any other ICT implementations, there is always the issue of whether time, money and effort invested are worthwhile given that students may learn with the same result even without using ICT. But viewing from a hoslitic perspective which includes the intangibles like joy of learning and meaning of learning, then using ICT certainly has its advantages. I tend to see the issue in this way. How's yours?
ReplyDeleteWooHL