The Effect of Animated Pedagogical Agents on Students Learning and Retention

This study aimed to investigate the effect of animated pedagogical agents in multimedia on students learning and retention. The statistical population consisted of all eighth grade girl students in region 4 of district 6 in Tehran. 60 students were selected using available sampling method and randomly divided into control and experimental groups. The research method was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design with control group. Before the implementation of instruction on the students of both groups, pre-test related to instructional content was conducted. The experimental group was trained in four instructional sessions using a researcher-made multimedia based on pedagogical agent and the control group was kept away from the independent variable. In the end, the post-test of learning and retention was performed. The research instrument included a researcher-made learning questionnaire and a retention questionnaire parallel with the learning test. Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (covariance) were used to analyze the data. In general, the results indicated that the pedagogical agents in multimedia increased learning and retention in students. Therefore, the results of this study showed the effective role of multimedia based on animated pedagogical agents in enhancing the learning and retention of the students.