Study I: FaceReader Data (Emotional Facial Expressions) after watching a Virtual Instructor

An application of virtual animals as virtual instructors has previously been considered a possibility (Sierra Rativa et al., 2020). In the previous research, they explored whether a virtual instructor’s appearance can influence students’ knowledge recall outcomes. We manipulated three distinct virtual instructor appearances: (1) virtual animal, (2) robot virtual animal, and (3) human. Moreover, we considered that the topic of a video instruction can also affect results, and therefore proposed two topics: (1) a topic related to robotics, and (2) a topic unrelated to robotics (i.e. to Dutch culture). The main questions: (1) Can the design appearance of the virtual animal affect the emotional facial expressions of the participants? (2) Which emotional facial expressions are displayed during each condition?