The Effect of Virtual Agent Gender and Embodiment on the Experiences and Performance of Students in Virtual Field Trips

In this paper, we explore how the embodiment and gender of a virtual instructor can affect social presence, spatial presence, perceived learning effectiveness, and performance of students in virtual field trips. A pilot study with 22 students was conducted in the spring of 2020 in a geoscience course at The Pennsylvania State University. Our results show that both gender and embodiment of a virtual instructor can affect the social and learning experiences of students. A female virtual instructor elicited higher levels of social presence, spatial presence, and perceived learning effectiveness compared to a male virtual instructor; and an embodied virtual instructor elicited a higher feeling of spatial presence compared to a disembodied virtual instructor.