Students prefer personalized, AI-generated educational videos over non-personalized, human-recorded videos

Abstract

Abstract Personalization is a well-established driver of student engagement, yet delivering individualized instruction at scale remains a challenge in online education. Recent advances in generative AI make scalable personalization feasible, but AI-generated educational videos are often perceived as inferior to human-recorded content. This tension raises the question: how does the value of personalization compare to that of human presence? We investigated this question through a field deployment in two offerings of a large undergraduate online course (493 respondents). AI-generated personalized videos served as the primary instructional modality, alongside a smaller set of non-personalized human-recorded and AI-generated videos. At the end of the course, students ranked preferences across personalized and non-personalized formats and human-recorded versus AI-generated content. In a direct comparison, students preferred AI-generated personalized videos over human-recorded non-personalized videos (mean rank 2.26 vs. 2.69; Wilcoxon signed-rank test, $$p < 0.001$$ ). Across analyses, students preferred personalized over non-personalized content, and human-recorded over AI-generated content. The magnitude of the personalization effect substantially exceeded the effect of human presence. Open-ended responses highlighted perceived benefits of relevance and conciseness in personalized AI videos, alongside concerns about naturalness and expressiveness. Together, these findings suggest that personalization can outweigh human presence in students’ evaluations of educational video.