e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning

8.5. Promote Personalization Through Polite Speech

A related implication of the personalization principle is that on-screen agents should be polite. For example, consider an instructional game in which an on-screen agent gives you feedback. A direct way to put the feedback is for the agent to say, "Click the ENTER key," and a more polite wording is, "You may want to click the ENTER key" or "Do you want to click on the ENTER key?" or "Let's click the ENTER key." A direct statement is, "Now use the quadratic formula to solve this equation," and a more polite version is "What about using the quadratic formula to solve this equation?" or "You could use the quadratic formula to solve this equation," or "We should use the quadratic formula to solve ...