Creating Impactful eLearning with Avatars

From role-playing to reducing learner anxiety, avatars offer significant benefits to learners. Garima Gupta shares how thoughtfully-designed avatars can play an important role in eLearning and significantly enhance learning experiences. 

Show Notes:

Garima Gupta explains that avatars play a crucial role in making eLearning experiences engaging and relatable and help to humanize the content and make it more interactive for learners. She offered these additional key points.

• Customization and Personalization: Customizing and personalizing avatars to reflect the diversity of the learner population can enhance the connection and relevance of the content. 
• Planning for Avatars Early On: Don’t think of using avatars as an afterthought but instead plan for how best to use them when you create your storyboard.
• Benefits of Avatars in eLearning: Avatars bring learning stories to life, and that is one of their biggest benefits. They have the unique ability to speak directly to the learner.
• Providing a Safe Place to Learn: Using avatars in eLearning can be more effective than in-person training because it provides a safe and personal training environment to interact with an avatar.

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Transcript

Susan Cort: [00:00:00] There are many ways that avatars can enhance the learning experience. When you plan how to use them in advance, you can improve learning outcomes even more. 

Garima Gupta: What happens is, most of the times, eLearning designers will take an avatar as an afterthought. Oh, okay, here is my learning objectives, here is my storyboard, let me add an avatar.

Garima Gupta: In which case, you don't really think of Too many creative ways. But if you define your avatar ahead of writing your storyboard, and you start thinking about which type of avatar, it can actually change your learning experience significantly. 

Susan Cort: That's Garima Gupta, CEO of Arthur Learning. Garima joins us to share ways to use avatars to create impactful learning experiences.

Susan Cort: Next, on Powered by Learning. 

Announcer: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d’Vinci Interactive. d’Vinci's approach to learning is grounded in 30 years of innovation and expertise. We use proven strategies and leading technology [00:01:00] to develop solutions that power learners to improve quality and boost performance.

Announcer: Learn more at dvinci.com. 

Susan Cort: Joining me today is d’Vinci President, Mason Scuderi, and our guest, Garima Gupta, who is going to share her expertise about using avatars in e learning. Hello, Garima. It's so nice to see you again. Welcome, Garima. 

Garima Gupta: Oh, happy to be here and thank you for having me. Very excited for our conversation.

Susan Cort: We are as well. Let's start out by giving our listeners a little bit of background about you and your current role at Artha Learning. 

Garima Gupta: Well, I am the founder and CEO of Artha Learning, but the origin story goes way back. I started my career as a software engineer. From there, I moved into K 12, figured out I had no patience.

Garima Gupta: I have newfound respect for all the teachers in K 12. I moved into writing for a national newspaper for a while, and then finally into adult training, which I loved. I found my place in adult learning and [00:02:00] development. And then seven years ago, I realized my dream of always being an entrepreneur, and I started my own company, Artha.

Garima Gupta: Which for a while, for the first few years, I ran solo and then started with my first teammate and today we are 15 team members who proudly call themselves part of the Arthur team. We build end to end learning solutions, mostly e learning solutions that, uh, that are engaging and that push the envelope of being innovative.

Susan Cort: Well, that's wonderful. That's quite a nice journey, and we're looking forward to learning more about your particular interest in using avatars. Totally. 

Mason Scuderi: Garima, so to set the foundation for us, tell us how you would define an avatar. 

Garima Gupta: You know, when I think of avatars, um, they are basically pedagogical agents, right?

Garima Gupta: They're on screen characters and they're guiding learners through the instructional process. So whether we think of them as virtual guides or companions or in any other role, they are the characters of the story and the story in this [00:03:00] case is instructional. So, in various forms, you could have avatars that provide tips and instructions.

Garima Gupta: You could have complex avatars in role playing activities. You have non-human avatars, like, you know, the famous or notorious, whatever you want to say, Clippy from Microsoft Word. But yeah, those, those are basically what I think of when I think of avatars. And what I really love about them is they can be tailored because we are building these avatars.

Garima Gupta: Thanks. So we could have them reflect the learner or somebody in their environment. We could create relatable learning experience. So that is what avatars are for me, 

Mason Scuderi: it's been interesting to follow the evolution of avatars, sort of outside of learning with, uh, all of us watching our kids create, uh, mees on, on the Nintendo, uh, all the way to Facebook.

Mason Scuderi: Mm-Hmm. Metaverse. And now with the Apple Vision Pro. The personas, uh, really, really impressive [00:04:00] versions of ourselves. 

Garima Gupta: Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, bringing all those experiences from outside the L& D environment where we are so comfortable working with non-player characters and then bringing them in, in learning and development and saying, how, how else can we make our work more textured, more rich?

Garima Gupta: I think that that's where I enjoy avatar, that they turn the whole process more intuitive. 

Susan Cort: What's funny, just the evolution of the acceptance of avatars, and some of those many platforms that Mason mentioned, probably makes them even more accepted in the learning and development environment. You know, maybe once upon a time, a learner might have thought of an avatar as being kind of an unprofessional representation, but now it's so much a part of our day in and day out, you probably look forward to seeing the avatars in the learning.

Garima Gupta: Yeah, definitely way more acceptance now. And I think sometimes people would think, you know, is it too cheesy? Is it too extraneous to the core content? Is it even helpful to have an avatar? And I [00:05:00] think that the devil is in details. It really depends on how you design and develop an avatar and whether it is core to the learning experience or is it just slapped on because you just need an avatar.

Susan Cort: That's interesting. So it needs to be authentic. 

Garima Gupta: Absolutely. And relevant. Yeah. 

Mason Scuderi: So as we're shifting the frame to adult e learning and we're planning for our project, what would you say are the biggest benefits of avatars that we should consider when we're planning out our learning experiences? 

Garima Gupta: Ooh, so many.

Garima Gupta: Um, well, one that immediately comes to mind is that the fact that an avatar can, depending on how you design it, it can reflect the learner's persona, right? So that could make your learning experience immediately more personalized and more relatable. Especially in e learning, they can bring an element of social learning into the digital space.

Garima Gupta: So you could use an avatar to simulate interactions or conversations. You know, we all know that social learning really, really helps us, that's how we learn, that's how we are [00:06:00] evolutionarily programmed to be. So we can bring that element into the digital space by using avatars. I think of it like this, think of a story without any characters.

Garima Gupta: I challenge it. It's really difficult. You can't really, right. 

Mason Scuderi: Yeah. 

Garima Gupta: I think avatars bring learning stories to life and that is one of their biggest benefits. They have the unique ability to speak directly to the learner. Many, many e learnings that I see in my work are sometimes just this non human, almost disjointed.

Garima Gupta: Narration happening in addition to the content. But using avatars, you could create a conversational atmosphere. You're not just delivering information, you are talking to the learner. So it, then it is less of a lecture, right? Those little, little things to make avatar a really strong tool. for everybody who is building e learning.

Mason Scuderi: Karima, what are some other examples and use cases that you run into? 

Garima Gupta: Well, first thing is the most common use case I [00:07:00] see is using avatars as guides, as mentors. So you're helping learners navigate through the course. You are providing directions. You are explaining complex concepts or insights. This comes most naturally to us because this is what we've seen in in person training.

Garima Gupta: So we essentially replicate our facilitator in an online course as a mentor avatar. But this is, you know, not to belittle it, this is an important role as well for avatars. This is a good use case. Because you are providing additional support to learners and they might need that help. But there are other use cases as well.

Garima Gupta: One is where avatars can present challenges. Minor difference, but instead of giving information, they are now coming to pose questions, to present scenarios, to offer problem solving tasks, right? And they are, in that case, encouraging learners to think critically, to apply their knowledge in practical scenarios.

Garima Gupta: They can offer [00:08:00] support. This one I love because what happens is many times, especially with technical courses, there is a whole lot of content there, but you want to highlight the important pieces. And as humans, our eyes and our focus naturally goes to characters. So, you could use avatars very effectively to provide hints, to essentially highlight important pieces of the information that they are going through.

Garima Gupta: You could support them, uh, keep them motivated so that, especially in courses where you feel like there might be a little bit of anxiety in learners and you need to build confidence, avatars can play a supportive role. They could turn assessments that can sometimes feel intimidating or monotonous Those can be turned into engaging interactions, right?

Garima Gupta: Now you have an avatar who is asking questions, providing feedback. Instead of having a text feedback, you have this avatar who walks onto the screen and says, Hey, you wrote this, but have you thought about this? Just changes the learning experience. [00:09:00] They bring a sense of realism. Think of a customer service training module, and your avatar can act as a customer there.

Garima Gupta: And you could have the learner practice and refine their skills in a safe and controlled environment. So a number of different use cases, Mason. I find also that sometimes with e learning, we are as designers, we are fighting different numbers of screens that people have, different windows that are fighting for their attention.

Garima Gupta: There's a feeling of isolation, perhaps, when people are going through e learning courses. So we could use avatars to foster somewhat of a digital sense of community and interaction. And especially if you're using AI, then kind of bringing in some real time interest in the course as well. 

Mason Scuderi: Kind of like having an ally in your corner.

Garima Gupta: Yes. And also sometimes those ally or those characters can have different perspectives. This is another thing that we've used very successfully. In complex [00:10:00] topics, where there is not a single viewpoint, right, you could have multiple avatars, each one of them have a separate viewpoint, and that could foster critical thinking in your learners because now they're seeing the same problem from different angles based on which avatar they're following.

Susan Cort: I love that it might actually help reduce anxiety for the learner. If a human instructor would somehow make them feel more anxious, but an avatar doesn't, you know, that's going to keep them more engaged in the learning too. 

Garima Gupta: Yes. And there could be places I feel where e learning actually trumps in person training because it provides you this safe and personal environment to interact with the avatar.

Garima Gupta: We have people who are relatively more introvert or wouldn't speak up otherwise, could really explore their concerns, their thoughts, their inadequacies at their own speed and at their own pace with an avatar. 

Mason Scuderi: So creating avatars that have characteristics and [00:11:00] personalities, uh, and ideally those find a way to support the overall learning goals.

Mason Scuderi: Of the learning experience. So lots of great reasons to consider an avatar. Uh, what are some of the challenges that we want to get on the table to make sure that we don't use an avatar in a place that, that it might not be the best fit? 

Garima Gupta: This has to be a fair and balanced discussion, right? There are challenges.

Garima Gupta: In the traditional e learning sense, I think the first thing that one must think about is the technical complexity and the cost of building an e learning with especially rich and textured avatars. If you're using avatars with advanced features, right, I don't know, speech recognition, facial expressions, if you're creating interactive videos with a number of different avatars, you know, this can turn out to be quite complex and costly.

Garima Gupta: Maybe created one, uh, e learning. Program with a number of, you know, the whole story had a number of different avatars and we had to create 75 [00:12:00] videos to cover all sorts of branching scenarios. And then we had to do it again in a different language. So just keeping that in mind and figuring out what's the blend of expertise you need in graphic design, animation, programming, that could be a significant barrier to entry.

Garima Gupta: I do have to say, avatars don't need to be programmatically complex to be effective. The second thing I would say is cultural sensitivity and representation is extremely important, and it poses a good challenge, I would say, to e learning developers and designers, because it is crucial that your avatar reflects the diversity of the learner population accurately and respectfully.

Garima Gupta: Right? So you want to, when you're building avatars, you've got to avoid the stereotypes. You need to ensure that they are culturally sensitive, that they're not causing offense among learners, or not even distracting them from the core content. Talking about distracting from the core [00:13:00] content, that is another issue of cognitive load.

Garima Gupta: Because if not designed thoughtfully, avatar is not always a good choice in all situations, right? So you've got to strike a balance between the visual and interactive elements of an avatar on one hand and the need for clear and focused content on the other hand. So looking at your content, your topic, your audience, and figuring out whether it's a good choice for an avatar experience or you want to stay away from that, I think is important and cognitive load would play.

Garima Gupta: A big, big piece in that. 

Susan Cort: Are there certain kinds of content that work best with avatars or could they be used in many uses? 

Garima Gupta: It really depends. I could think of like all kinds of content that could benefit from avatars if designed well, maybe to different degrees, right? Doesn't have to be an avatar driven experience.

Garima Gupta: It could just [00:14:00] be a for example, a technical training where we're going through heavy, detailed, technical topics, you probably don't want a whole bunch of avatar experiences there, but it might still help from a ask an expert sort of experience where There is a little bubble. You click that and avatar pops up.

Garima Gupta: It's like, okay, what question do you have? How can I help you with? So, yeah, I don't know if there is any specific vertical or area I would say stay away from avatars. It would be on a case-by-case basis, I suppose. And I would say though, you know, different types of learning, maybe different types of avatars could be useful, right?

Garima Gupta: If you're using avatars for leadership training versus onboarding, whether your audience is experienced or newbies. That might change which avatar you want to use, whether you want to use a mentor avatar, or a protege, or, you know, you want to bring in a [00:15:00] rival style of avatar to induce some competitive, some gamification elements, and that might change based on the audience.

Mason Scuderi: I confess that when I think of avatars, I almost primarily always think of a human style character, but I know that there are some other alternatives. What are some good alternatives that go beyond just the standard humanoid character that we might think of when we think of an avatar? 

Garima Gupta: I have even used a Rubik's Cube as an avatar.

Mason Scuderi: No way! 

Garima Gupta: Yes! And, and won an award for that, you know, but, um, Let me reframe that question on, on the characteristics of the avatar, because human or not, I think different types of characteristics play a big role in defining different types of avatars. What happens is, most of the times, e learning designers will take an avatar as an afterthought.

Garima Gupta: Okay, here is my learning objectives, here is my storyboard, let me add an avatar. In which case, you don't really think of too many creative ways. [00:16:00] But if you define your avatar ahead of writing your storyboard, and you start thinking about which type of avatar, it can actually change your learning experience significantly.

Garima Gupta: So, if your avatar is a mentor style, human or not, right, you will use it for situations where learners need additional support. So, it could be for new trainees who are just getting started and, you know, they need somebody to show them the way, right? Mentors are effective in scenarios that require clear authority, maybe compliance training, policy updates, because they are providing guidance.

Garima Gupta: They're ensuring learners stay on the right path. But now contrast that with companion styles of avatar, where, you know, there are situations which involve nuances or discoveries. So the companion style of avatar is not telling you what is the right thing to do. It's just offering, encouraging critical thinking, offering more independence, and the learner can decide whether it follows the avatar's advice or they forge their own path.

Garima Gupta: And then contrast that [00:17:00] with a rival style of avatar. That kind of avatar is challenging you, it's probably sabotaging you in some ways. They are providing an engaging challenge, and so maybe think of that in routine training, such as your annual compliance courses, and people who've taken it multiple times can then maybe, you know, speedrun it with a rival.

Garima Gupta: There could be protégé avatars, especially for leadership training. Wonderful, because these are, your learners are people who are already in managerial positions. In addition to the content, You're also guiding them, teaching them how to guide less experienced individuals the way they guide the protégé avatar.

Garima Gupta: So different types of avatars in that sense, I think, can really change the learning experience. And then how you visually create them is then your next step. Because now they could be humanoid, they could be images, they could be illustrations, they could be [00:18:00] stock footage or footage that you have taken.

Garima Gupta: It could be AI avatars, animated videos. But that, I think, comes secondary to the instructional design of the avatars themselves. 

Mason Scuderi: So my takeaways are an avatar that doesn't have all the answers and an avatar that's going to challenge you to a duel. That's great. I had never thought about avatars influencing learning in that way, but that's really good.

Mason Scuderi: That's a different angle. 

Susan Cort: And avatars can be good for role playing to teach soft skills too, right? 

Garima Gupta: Oh, yes. And, again, in role play As you define the characteristics of your avatar, you're also at the same time defining the characteristics of your learner, right? So if I'm doing a roleplay and the avatar is my boss, immediately I know that, you know, I'm reporting to this boss.

Garima Gupta: Vice versa, if the avatar is a customer, I become an agent. So in a role play or in a scenario, as you define the avatar, you're also [00:19:00] defining the learner. And that makes it doubly so interesting. And it could change how you, how you look at instructionally designing that scenario, that role play, or the whole course as well.

Garima Gupta: Sometimes the whole course is a big role play, right? I especially love those kind of experiences where we have one avatar that takes you throughout the course in different types of content and experiences and engagements. And that supports you throughout the course. 

Mason Scuderi: Garima, you mentioned AI avatars, kind of stepping back for a minute or stepping into that frame.

Mason Scuderi: What are some ways that AI is influencing avatars as a whole? 

Garima Gupta: Just considering for a minute how to frame this, because there are two core parallel tracks when I talk about AI and how that works with avatars. So the first one and the most common one is how do we use AI to help us build more relatable avatars, more dynamic avatars.

Garima Gupta: And in that [00:20:00] sort of traditional e learning sense, we could use AI to help us with the various steps that usually are included in creating an avatar. Thanks a lot. So what are you doing when you're creating an avatar? You are first figuring out your learner personas, right? What kind of character you want.

Garima Gupta: Then you are defining that persona a little bit more. The age, the profession, the learning goals. And then using that, now you're creating an avatar, you're creating dialogues for that person, or you're crafting scripts that that avatar will use to interact with learners. You are thinking of scenarios in which the avatar is effectively utilized, whether it is to guide or support or challenge your learner.

Garima Gupta: In all these steps, you could use AI very effectively to brainstorm with you, to copilot and co-write with you. Okay, what kind of personas will help me here? Create 15 different avatars for this one and then you pick one and then from there you ask it to create dialogues in [00:21:00] that sense. For how would somebody with this persona speak this?

Garima Gupta: And AI can be really, really helpful there. 

Mason Scuderi: Using AI to help you develop the content of your avatar, essentially. 

Garima Gupta: Exactly, exactly. That is one stream, right, where we can use AI to support us in building the avatars and the persona itself. And then the second is where you create AI powered e learning, and that takes avatars to a completely new level, because now your avatars are not predefined, prewritten.

Garima Gupta: Now you could create more sophisticated and interactive avatars, which are dynamically responding to you, right? So there are ways where you can connect the avatar to an AI LLM directly or using another platform. And so, AI can serve as an ever-present guide. You can ask real questions. The learner can type a question and the AI avatar can look at its knowledge base and come back with real time answers.

Garima Gupta: It can give real time feedback. So, depending on how your [00:22:00] learners are answering questions, an avatar can come and say, Hey, I noticed that you did this and this right, but you did this and this wrong. Here's some personalized support for you. And that really changes. AI allows learners to give avatars a personality.

Garima Gupta: So, you could have a learner choose, okay, do you want a happy boss or do you want a snarky and upset boss? And based on what they choose, now, and I will tell you, every time I have given learners this choice, they go, they pick up the snarky boss. Mason, 

Susan Cort: Don't worry, we would never create a snarky version of you, just a happy, thoughtful boss avatar.

Mason Scuderi: Not the snarky version of me, huh? 

Susan Cort: Never. 

Mason Scuderi: That's a really powerful extension of an, say, an avatar mentor, you know, that guides you through the training and is there, but then at the end of the training, that avatar is there as a learning language model to be there for your follow up questions, to support you through the second half of your learning [00:23:00] journey. 

Garima Gupta: Right. 

Mason Scuderi: It's pretty powerful. 

Garima Gupta: Yeah. And we know that, uh, advanced learners especially, they learn when they know that they're being heard, right? That the training experience is made for them. It is relevant and individualized for them. So, and when they have some say in it, so you let them choose the style of your avatar, let the avatar give personalized feedback to them.

Garima Gupta: Suddenly, the training experience is totally elevated. 

Susan Cort: Garima, when you look ahead, how do you see technology impacting what we can do with avatars in learning? 

Garima Gupta: Honestly, Susan, I have to say, who knows? Because there are two things to it, actually. It's funny because in one dimension, the core role of avatar is not going to change.

Garima Gupta: Because we as human beings, we respond to stories. At the very core of our existence, right, we respond to each other, we respond to emotions at an affective domain level. So that way we are going to respond similarly regardless of what [00:24:00] role the avatars take and how technically sophisticated or not sophisticated they are.

Garima Gupta: The most famous characters are basically text written on a paper in books, and for so many people, they have a life of their own, say, Harry Potter books, right? Nothing sophisticated or technical about them, in that sense, they are not built in AR, VR, AI, but yet they are so real and so rich. So, at some level, I think the human experience with avatars is going to be the same.

Garima Gupta: At another level, on the technical visual level, I think we will see so many interesting things with new updates in technology and VR becoming more accessible, goggles becoming more accessible. AI becoming more accessible, we would very soon have multi modal avatars who are speaking to us on our phones and walking us through various types of training activities.

Garima Gupta: I think we will see in general less and less training and more and more performance support, but that is a completely different [00:25:00] discussion anyways. 

Susan Cort: Well, we will look forward to talking with you about avatars again in the future. Part two. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for being with us today, Garima. 

Garima Gupta: My pleasure.

Susan Cort: Thank you for having me. 

Mason Scuderi: Thanks, Garima.

Susan Cort: Mason, that was a fun conversation with Garima. She certainly makes you think of new and creative ways to use avatars. 

Mason Scuderi: I agree, Susan. I really liked our conversation around the use of non-human avatars, different avatar types, and my personal favorite, avatars as adversaries. 

Susan Cort: Yes, that was kind of fun.

Mason Scuderi: So we've got, we've got some new ideas to process for sure.

Susan Cort: And I also love how she stressed the importance of thinking about avatars at the beginning of the project and not as an afterthought. 

Mason Scuderi: I really appreciated that too. Avatars are not an afterthought and just so important to include your strategy in upfront learning experience design to make sure that avatars are helping to contribute to your overall learning goals.

Susan Cort: [00:26:00] Absolutely. Well, thanks, Mason. And special thanks to our guest, Garima Gupta of Artha Learning. If you have an idea for a podcast topic or guest, please reach out to us at poweredbylearning@dvinci. com. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts.