Using Avatars to Enhance Learning Comprehension – (eLearning Guild Online Forum)

Just finishing up another online forum through the eLearning Guild. This one was presented by Jennifer Hoch & Dan Karwoski from Intuit. They were explaining and demonstrating how they use avatars for training with their employees. There was information on the impact on students including increased engagement and intrinsic motivation. Also that learners tend to respond better to interaction that are more similar to real life.

I wasn’t completely sold on this particular session. It was by no means a commercial, but it just seemed to have that feel to me. Perhaps I got biased from the beginning expecting something different. Although, I can’t really say exactly why. Maybe it’s because so far my experience with avatars has felt something along the lines of automated phone calls. Not the ones where you press 1 for yes, 2 for no. More like say English if you want your call in English and say French if you want it in French. Then no matter how slow or clear you try to say English you end up with Spanish!?!

I can’t give a great review on this session, but I can’t completely discount the material. It just wasn’t for me at this point in time.

Comments 0

  1. Hi Tracey,

    I really appreciate your honest feedback! Hearing what you had to say AND how you felt is a huge contribution to our effort to improve our presentation! Since this was the first presentation for either Jen or I we may not have been as thorough or inclusive as we could have been. Our delivery style may have appeared to be a 90 minute infomercial but our intent was to promote the use of avatars and explain why we have adopted them. I think our inexperience may have contributed to a false impression of our intent.

    We were contacted only a week before the presentation and had NO material developed at the time. This presentation was basically a warm up for the big event in November. I’m not saying I think anyone was short changed but I think November’s version will be more polished and hopefully more persuasive in the use of avatars. Thanks to your feedback. I really appreciate it.

    Dan Karwoski

  2. Dan: Thanks for taking the time to the clarify your presentation experience. As I said too, I may have just had a set idea in my mind of what I was expecting to see and that is never a good idea when you walk into any presentation. I think it’s great that you are willing taking feed back and using it to make a good presentation great.

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