数字人教育应用的演进、趋势与挑战

Digital Human in Educational Research: Evolution, Trends and Challenges

教育领域中的数字人是指存在于数字虚拟空间中,通过知识传递、社会交互等教育手段增强学习效果或学习感知觉的具象化虚拟人物的统称。数字人无论是在技术迭代还是应用创新上都与互联网发展息息相关。随着三次互联网形态的演进,教育领域中的数字人从支持知识单向传递、无情感关注、多媒体表征、弱交互行为向知识多向传递、重视情感关注、3D或全息表征、多向交互转变。技术支撑层面,教育领域中的数字人技术载体依然呈现欠智能、弱交互的特点,计算机视觉和拓展现实技术在教育中的应用明显增加。实践赋能层面,数字人在增强教师智能教学和学生自主学习方面有积极作用,但目前应用主要集中在高等教育和K12教育阶段。人本关注层面,数字人通过声音和形象两大设计要素影响学习者认知发展,通过识别、测量、干预来提升学习者的情感交互体验。随着技术的不断更新迭代,数字人体现出类人化水平不断提高、身份可塑性逐渐增强、共情力持续提升的发展趋势,但其也面临算力保障不足、数字版权不清、导致教育弱化或学习惰性、引发伦理风险等挑战。未来,数字人教育应用应重视开发人机协同模式,完善底层技术保障,立足育人根本目标,推动教育公平、高质量发展。

Digital humans in education refer to virtual beings present in digital spaces,designed to enhance learning effectiveness and perceptual experience through knowledge transmission and social interaction.The development of digital humans is closely intertwined with the evolution of the Internet,marked by technological advancement and application innovation.Initially,digital humans in education supported one-way knowledge transmission,lacked emotional engagement,utilized multimedia representation,and had limited behavioral interaction.However,with the progress of the Internet through its three phases,digital humans have transitioned towards facilitating multi-directional knowledge transmission,emphasizing emotional engagement,and employing 3D or holographic representation with enhanced interactive capabilities.Despite these advancements,the technological support for digital humans in education still exhibits characteristics of limited intelligence and weak interactivity.Nevertheless,there has been a noticeable increase in the application of computer vision and augmented reality technologies,which offer promising avenues for further development.At the practical level,digital humans have played a positive role in enhancing intelligent teaching for educators and fostering autonomous learning for students.However,their current application primarily focuses on higher education and K-12 education stages.Concerning human-centered aspects,digital humans significantly influence learners’cognitive development through two major design elements:sound and visual representation.Additionally,they enhance learners’emotional interactive experience by enabling identification,measurement and intervention.As technology continues to evolve,digital humans demonstrate a development trend of constantly increased human-like characteristics,gradually enhanced identity adaptability and continuously improved empathy.However,digital humans also face a range of challenges,including insufficient guarantees of computing power,unclear digital copyrights,potential risks of educational dilution or learning inertia,and ethical concerns.Looking towards the future,the education application of digital humans should prioritize the development of human-machine collaboration models and improve underlying technologies,with a focus on the fundamental goal of nurturing individuals to promote equitable and high-quality development of education.