This article describes a web-based learning environment designed to teach effective helping skills to human service students. Participants either read a helper-client script or practiced their helping skills with a virtual client in an interactive pedagogical agent environment. Researchers compared the environments and assessed leaning gains in each environment. User perceptions of qualities such as believability, motivation, and interest and open-ended comments were also collected. Findings indicate significant improvement in helping skills but not in the ability to discriminate the quality of responses to the client. Results from this study provided designers information on the feasibility of the system's implementation as an online supplement to instruction.