The effect of computer-aided instruction software prepared by using different pedagogical agents to students' academic achievements, motivations, interests in their courses, judgements about their computer-aided instruction and cognitive loads

The main purpose of this study is to explore the impacts of pedagogical agents in computer-aided software. In this respect, the effects of computer-aided instruction with instructional software that has a) no pedagogical agent, b) a fixed pedagogical agent, c) choice-based multi pedagogical agent on students' judgements about computer-aided instruction, academic achievements, motivations, interests in the course, their cognitive loads and interface preferences were investigated. Due to the scarcity of the studies focusing on the role of pedagogical agents, the present study attempts to provide original results and contribute a lot to this field. The study was conducted at one school for the piloting and at three schools for the main study during the second semester of 2014-2015 academic year. The main study included 347 students and the whole study used the data from 1776 students.In addition to examining the variables, the researcher adapted more than one scale. To analyze the quantitative data, common statistical analyses were utilized including Hedges' g to calculate the effect size. Results indicated that computer-aided instruction with pedagogical agent was found to be beneficial and statistically efficient in terms of other variables. Keywords: Pedagogical agent, educational agent, motivation, course interest,interaction.