Students and Virtual Instructors

New research published in Computers in Human Behavior finds that students hold a slight preference for computerized training agents whose appearance and style resembled their own (link to journal here, link to summary here).  The study did find that of the two, subjective appearance or more objective instructive style, the instructor’s style had a bigger impact on student learning.  Something to keep in mind when developing e-learning courses, understanding a student’s learning style matters…who knew?