Baylor, A. L., Shen, E., & Huang, X. (2003). Which Pedagogical Agent do Learners Choose? The Effects of Gender and Ethnicity. In G. Richards (Ed.), Proceedings of World Conference on ELearning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2003, Phoenix, Arizona, (pp. 1507-1510), Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Publication year: 2003

This study examined how learners’ gender and ethnicity influenced their choice of pedagogical agents how they perceived the persona of the chosen agents. 183 undergraduates from two southeast universities participated in the study and were provided eight agents to choose from, each differing by gender (male, female), ethnicity (African American, Caucasian), and realism (realistic, cartoon). The results showed that African-American learners were significantly more likely to choose an agent with the same ethnicity and also to have positive attitudes toward the chosen agent after learning from it. Overall, the perceived agent demeanor was the most cited reason for why learners chose a particular agent. Female learners were more likely to choose a cartoon-like (as opposed to realistic) agent than male learners and were also more likely than males to choose an agent based on their previous experiences with human instructors.