Effect of Look-Alike Avatars on Students' Perceptions of Teaching Effectiveness

This paper presents a study investigating the influence of look-alike avatars on students' perceptions of teaching effectiveness in three-dimensional virtual and augmented reality environments. This study investigated three avatar representations: i) look-alike avatar of the instructor; ii) stick avatar; and iii) video recording of the instructor. Eighteen participants were asked to rank the three avatar representations, as well as the immersion experience of the teaching simulation on the virtual and augmented reality displays. The result of this study suggests that look-alike avatars can be used to represent an instructor in virtual environments.

1 Introduction

Over the last few years, technology has become increasingly available that allows people to make avatars that look like and behave like the user (look-alike avatars). The creation of photorealistic self avatars with full face and body animations is important for virtual reality applications that aim for perception and action to replicate real world experience [2].