The influences of a virtual instructor's voice and appearance on learning from video lectures

Abstract Background Video lectures which include the instructor's presence are becoming increasingly popular. Presenting a real human does, however, entail higher financial and time costs in making videos, and one innovative approach to reduce costs has been to generate a virtual speaking instructor. Objectives The current study examined whether the use of a virtual instructor in video lectures would facilitate learning as well as a human instructor, and whether manipulating the virtual instructor's characteristics (i.e., voice and appearance) might optimize the effectiveness of the virtual instructor. Methods Our study set four conditions. In the control condition, students watched a human instructor. In the experiment conditions, students watched one of (a) a virtual instructor which used the human instructor's voice and an AI image, (b) a virtual instructor which spoke in an AI voice with an AI image made to speak using text‐to‐speech and lip synthesis techniques, or (c) a virtual instructor with used an AI voice and an AI likable‐image of an instructor. Results and Conclusions The AI likable instructor condition had a significant positive effect on students' learning performance and motivation, without decreasing the attention students paid to the learning materials. Implications Our findings suggest that instructional video designers can make use of AI voices and AI images of likable humans as instructors to motivate students and enhance their learning performance.