Virtual agents as supporting media for scientific presentations
- PDF / 1,147,610 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 8 Downloads / 166 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Virtual agents as supporting media for scientific presentations Timothy Bickmore1
· Everlyne Kimani1 · Ameneh Shamekhi1 · Prasanth Murali1 · Dhaval Parmar1 · Ha Trinh1
Received: 30 October 2019 / Accepted: 15 October 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The quality of scientific oral presentations is often poor, owing to a number of factors, including public speaking anxiety. We present DynamicDuo, a system that uses an automated, life-sized, animated agent to help inexperienced scientists deliver their presentations in front of an audience. The design of the system was informed by an analysis of TED talks given by pairs of human presenters to identify the most common dual-presentation formats and transition behaviors used. We explore the usability and acceptability of DynamicDuo in both controlled laboratory-based studies and real-world environments, and its ability to decrease public speaking anxiety and improve presentation quality. In a within-subjects study (N 12) comparing co-presenting with DynamicDuo against solo-presenting with conventional presentation software, we demonstrated that our system led to significant improvements in public speaking anxiety and speaking confidence for non-native English speakers. Judges who viewed videotapes of these presentations rated those with DynamicDuo significantly higher on speech quality and overall presentation quality for all presenters. We also explore the affordances of the virtual co-presenter through empirical evaluation of novel roles the agent can play in scientific presentations and novel ways it can interact with the speaker in front of the audience. Keywords Co-presentation · Virtual agent · Slide-ware · PowerPoint · Embodied conversational agent · Public speaking anxiety
1 Introduction The state of the art in scientific presentations has not progressed in the last 25 years. The quintessential scientific presentation today still features a scholar standing in front of a projection screen, speaking from his or her notes or slides, with supporting images and text displayed for the audience. The typical quality of such presentations—across all professions—is poor. A survey of 2501 professionals [1] revealed that 35% of respondents rarely or never rehearse for their presentations, and because of this and many other problems, respondents gave a “C-” grade (2.9 on a 1-to-5 scale) for all presentations they had attended. Poor presentations can result in scientists failing to engage, inform, and persuade their audience, and can even damage their credibility and social standing. There are many reasons for these failures, including: deficiencies in language, speech, and presentation skills; lack of content mastery; time and resource constraints;
B 1
Timothy Bickmore [email protected] Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
lack of preparation and rehearsal; and public speaking anxiety, which affects at least 35% of the population [2]. Scientific presentations can be made in a variety of v
Data Loading...
