Use of Animated Pedagogical Agent in Sport Management Education: Effect on Students’ Situational Interest

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how an animated pedagogical agent (APA) affected an individual’s level of situational interest (SI) using a case study in online education. Although online learning has become popular, the lack of social cues for students in distance-learning contexts has been suggested as problematic. APA has been conceptualized to support social agency theory between students and learning contents. SI has been considered to activate student’s immediate affective response to engage in an authentic learning context. The study examined the effect of APA in a case study on triggered-SI and maintained-SI to determine the benefits of multimedia-based instruction in online learning. A three-factor model including triggered-SI, maintained-SI-feeling, and maintained-SI-value was tested. Results revealed that the use of APA in a case study more positively stimulated students’ SI specific to triggered-SI and maintained-SI-value. Therefore, the implementation of the APA in a distance education setting could benefit students’ learning and also help educators to more effectively deliver a variety of sport management content areas.