Best practice for animating APAs: an analytical approach to the existing structure of animated pedagogical agents (APAs) and their advacement in multimedia learning through the lens of character animation's twelve principles

Abstract

A learner's cognition benefits from a well-embodied animated pedagogical agent that engenders a sense of social affinity with the learner within a virtual learning environment, such as e-learning. Herein, the theory of a balanced approach to animating pedagogical agents ties the principles of animation to those of multimedia design. This nascent theory informs the best practice for animating pedagogical agents (APAs). The grounded theory method raises it through an analysis of extant texts within the broad fields of animation and multimedia learning. Based on similar memos from the wide text base, focused codes are inductively derived. The focused codes then taper towards theoretical categories that group similar codes and ultimately inform the deductive reasoning behind the nascent theory of a balanced approach to animating pedagogical agents. Implications for future research, the design and animation of pedagogical agents are discussed.