Nicholas Joseph Berns

The prevalence of remote instruction has heightened the need to understand how emerging avatar technologies might support instructor presence in virtual classrooms. Digital twins, defined here as animated avatars that mirror a speaker’s facial expressions and movements in real time, represent a potential alternative to standard webcam video. This formative study examines student perceptions following exposure to a digital twin instructor during live Zoom lectures. Twenty-four students completed a post-session survey assessing perceived realism, emotional engagement, and willingness to attend future sessions. Spearman correlation analysis revealed that affective qualities such as likeability and enjoyment showed strong positive associations with receptivity, while perceptions of awkwardness and weirdness showed strong negative associations. Perceived natural movement was strongly associated with human resemblance and inversely associated with eeriness, consistent with uncanny valley theory. These exploratory findings identify candidate factors for future controlled investigations and offer preliminary design guidance emphasizing behavioral fidelity and emotional warmth over photorealism alone.