Study on developing cognitive load friendly pedagogical agent for massive open online course (MOOCs) platform

In the field of educational technology, the introduction and development of pedagogical agents have been landmark events, providing creative ways to enhance and change the learning process. Their ability to improve learning may be beneficial for learning platforms such as MOOCs. The rise in user learning using MOOC platform has opened up new possibilities for enhancing the learning experience with pedagogical agents. Nevertheless, the implementation of pedagogical agents has been in a quandary, as it may impose cognitive overload and hinder the learning process. Thus, this research aims to design a pedagogical agent that is cognitive load-friendly for the MOOC platform. The design elements were identified, and the pedagogical agent was developed using the proposed design elements. A quasi-experiment was conducted with a sample of 108 students, who were divided equally into a control group and a treatment group. Based on the Mann-Whitney U test conducted, the cognitive load of the intervention group is significantly better than the student in the control group. Student performance in the treatment group is also significantly better compared to the control group. In conclusion, this research succeeded in developing a design model for a pedagogical agent that is cognitive load-friendly on the MOOC platform. The outcomes of this research may be beneficial to researchers in the field as a guideline for developing cognitive load-friendly pedagogical agents.