Proposal and evaluation of on-demand lecture video using avatars, humor, and questions to avoid boredom

On-demand lectures have become widespread due to COVID-19, and while there are advantages to being able to watch lectures whenever students want, disadvantages such as not being able to concentrate on them have been pointed out. Then, it is necessary to devise a more preparatory method that is less boring. Thus, a method was proposed to generate humor and questions about important words in lecture scenarios by the lecturers’ specification of the words, and create lecture videos for demonstration by two avatars to attenuate the problem of “boredom with on-demand lectures”. Experiments were conducted to validate the proposed method, and since previous research suggested that learners’ attitudes (preferences) toward an avatar affect their learning motivation, the influence of viewers’ impressions of avatar lectures on the effectiveness of the proposed method was examined. The experimental results suggested that including humor or question in on-demand lectures affects resistance to boredom. Furthermore, results of the confirmation test conducted after viewing the videos indicated that the more natural the viewers perceived the lectures given by the avatars, the greater the positive effect on recognition of targeted words. The effects of the proposed method were shown especially for viewers who were familiar with avatar’s lecture.