Virtual Omnibus Lecture：多様な講師アバタを使った遠隔講義が学生の記憶に与える効果

抄録

Human memory is influenced by contexts, such as surrounding scenery and situations. Specifically, learning in various contexts improves memory retention, which is called a multiple-context effect. To take advantage of the effect in remote education, we propose Virtual Omnibus Lecture, a novel form of remote lecturing using virtual avatars. In the proposed method, a lecturer changes his/her virtual avatars multiple times during a lecture. Thus, this method makes it as if the students receive a single lecture from multiple lecturers. We hypothesized that learning with various lecturer avatars can benefit students’ memory based on the multiple-context effect. We conducted a field study with a between-participant design in a remote lecture. We compared the four-avatar condition, where the lecturer taught using four different avatars, with the one-avatar condition, where the lecturer used a constant avatar throughout the lecture. The results showed that the memory test scores immediately after the lecture were significantly higher for the four-avatar condition than for the one-avatar condition. This study provides a new perspective on using lecturer avatars, a promising avenue for remote lecturing.