Boost Learning Engagement with Animated Characters

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As learning and development professionals, we are always looking for ways to connect with our audience and boost learner engagement. Animated videos with characters can help us achieve this goal.

At d’Vinci Interactive, we create learning solutions for both K-12 and adult learners. We leverage animated characters to:

• Tell stories with powerful messages

• Create emotional connections

• Foster fun, safe places to explore complicated topics

• Provide learners with a guide or host

• Demonstrate behaviors

Let’s take a look at two examples.

Start with Hello

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d’Vinci partnered with Sandy Hook Promise to create an online experience for their Start With Hello program, an initiative aimed at eliminating social isolation in the K-5 elementary audience. We created several videos using imaginative characters to tell relatable stories of bullying, isolation, and ultimately, friendship. Each video evokes feelings of empathy and provides instruction on how incidents of isolation can be avoided. This example highlights how animated characters can be used to create emotional connections and serve as a powerful way to enact change. The diverse set of animated characters in these videos allows the audience to explore complex social behaviors which they should model or avoid without the risk of perpetuating stereotypes.

Rape Prevention and Education

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Animated characters can also be effective at reaching adult learners. Collaborating with The Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape (PCAR), d’Vinci developed an eLearning program for adult learners training to become rape prevention educators. The attention-grabber for this course is a video that follows animated characters on their journey to protect community members from falling in a hazardous river. The story teaches that the best way to protect the community is to prevent people from falling in the river rather than responding after the fact. Audiences are able to learn and grasp this concept in an easy, lighthearted way before applying it to a more difficult topic, sexual abuse prevention.

Are you ready to take your training and education to new heights? Try incorporating animated characters into your next learning experience, and capture both the minds and hearts of your audience.

Learn more about how d'Vinci uses video and animation in learning.