This article describes an exploratory study of two Web-based learning environments designed to teach helping skills to human service students. Participants used either an interactive pedagogical agent environment or read a helper-client script. Environments were compared and learning gains were assessed in each of the environments, along with user perceptions of motivation, believability, and interest. Findings indicate significant improvement in communication skills, but not in the ability to discriminate the quality of helping responses. Results from this study provided information on the feasibility of the system's implementation. Recommendations for improvements to the system are also discussed.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]