Desenvolvimento de uma Ferramenta para a Construção e Integração de Personagens Virtuais Animados com Voz Sintética a Materiais Didáticos para EAD

One of the great challenges of distance learning is the production of teaching materials. Most of the materials available for students concentrated in textual format , which may make it unattractive to learning. Numerous initiatives are being done in order to provide audiovisual material by means of animated virtual characters, however its complexity and cost are quite high. This work aims to design, develop and evaluate a tool, called Avatar Education Supplement, which automates the process of building animations with virtual characters with synthetic voice integrated to teaching materials used in distance learning. As results, it was realized a process of designing and developing the tool well-founded in literature of different areas of knowledge, which made it possible cycles of interaction involving directly the participation of interested users, and it was realized a qualitative evaluation of final version based on expert opinion. Thus, we consider that the Avatar Education Supplement has much to contribute to the minimization of effort in the production of audiovisual material contributing to an important advance in distance learning.