Multimedia motivational agent: The impact on the middle school students' science learning and motivation

This study examined the effects of motivational agent (present and absent) and different formats of instructional content (text narrative and animated narrative) on student learning and motivation. The provision of motivational agent was found to significantly interact with the format of instructional content on student performance. The provision of motivational agent affected student performance when reading animated narrative content. However, the provision of motivational agent did not affect student motivation when reading either text or animated narrative contents. The implications of current study extends what we know about the benefits of motivational agent in learning and offers important insights on how to better design or integrate motivational agent in the instructional content to enhance performance and motivation to learn.