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We conducted a field study using Tobii Glasses 2.0 eye-tracker to assess 11 experienced university teachers' eye gaze patterns in classrooms, and the impact of these patterns on 293 students' engagement, motivation and satisfaction. Independent-samples t tests showed that compared to teachers who gazed primarily at students, teachers who showed a balance of eye gaze towards students and teaching content had students who were more engaged, motivated and satisfied. Furthermore, mediation analyses indicated that there were significant mediating roles of engagement and motivation in the association between teachers' eye gaze pattern and students' satisfaction. Our results have practical implications for educational practice: teachers are encouraged to allocate their attention both to students and teaching content to enhance students' learning experience.

Synchronous online learning via technology has become a major trend in institutions of higher education, allowing students to learn from video lectures alongside their peers online. However, relatively little research has focused on the influence of these peers on students' learning during video lectures and even less on the effect of peer familiarity. The present study aimed to test the various effects of peer presence and peer familiarity on learning from video lectures. There were three experimental conditions: individual-learning, paired-learning with an unfamiliar peer, and paired-learning with a familiar peer. ANCOVA results found that students paired with a familiar peer reported higher motivation in learning and more self-monitoring behaviors than those paired with an unfamiliar peer or who learned alone. Furthermore, students paired with both unfamiliar or familiar peers demonstrated better learning transfer than those who learned alone. Together, these results confirm the benefits of and support learning alongside a familiar peer during video lectures.

This study tested the mutual effects of the instructor's eye gaze and facial expression on students' eye movements (i.e. first fixation time to the slides, percentage dwell time on the slides, and percentage dwell time on the instructor), parasocial interaction, and learning performance in pre-recorded video lectures. Students (N = 118 undergraduate and graduate students) were assigned to watch one of four videos in a 2 (gaze: direct, guided) × 2 (facial expression: surprised, neutral) between-groups design. Contrary to our hypotheses, eye movement data showed that students who watched the video lecture with the instructor's guided gaze and surprised face showed longer first fixation time to the slides and lower dwell time on the slides; these students also had lower learning scores. Instructor eye gaze and facial expression did not influence students' ratings of parasocial interaction. Our results suggest that in reference to social cues during video lectures with slides, "more" is not necessarily "better." The findings have practical implications for designing pre-recorded slide-based video lectures: An instructor is cautioned against using multiple social cues simultaneously, especially in video lectures in which the instructor and the visual learning materials compete for students' attention.

Background: Video lectures which include the instructor's presence are becoming increasingly popular. Presenting a real human does, however, entail higher financial and time costs in making videos, and one innovative approach to reduce costs has been to generate a virtual speaking instructor. Objectives: The current study examined whether the use of a virtual instructor in video lectures would facilitate learning as well as a human instructor, and whether manipulating the virtual instructor's characteristics (i.e., voice and appearance) might optimize the effectiveness of the virtual instructor. Methods: Our study set four conditions. In the control condition, students watched a human instructor. In the experiment conditions, students watched one of (a) a virtual instructor which used the human instructor's voice and an AI image, (b) a virtual instructor which spoke in an AI voice with an AI image made to speak using text-to-speech and lip synthesis techniques, or (c) a virtual instructor with used an AI voice and an AI likable-image of an instructor. Results and Conclusions: The AI likable instructor condition had a significant positive effect on students' learning performance and motivation, without decreasing the attention students paid to the learning materials. Implications: Our findings suggest that instructional video designers can make use of AI voices and AI images of likable humans as instructors to motivate students and enhance their learning performance.

Generating written explanations is a popular learning strategy in an online learning environment. Students can explain to themselves (ie, self-explanations) or a peer-student (ie, instructional explanations). However, for improving learning from video lectures, it is unclear whether writing self-explanations is more beneficial than writing instructional explanations, and whether writing both types of explanation is more beneficial than writing only one type. We compared the learning-related outcomes of students who wrote explanations under one of four conditions: self-explanation (n = 30), instructional explanation (n = 30), self-explanation then instructional explanation (n = 30) and instructional explanation then self-explanation (n = 30). We assessed the participants' external and internal attention, explanation quality, and immediate and delayed learning performance. Students in the conditions that included self-explanations showed higher internal attention, as well as better immediate and delayed performance than those in the instructional explanations condition. In addition, students in the two combined conditions showed a higher level of organization and elaboration than those in the instructional explanations condition. These results suggest that students should write explanations to themselves while learning from video lectures.

An emerging body of research has focused on students' creativity in group contexts, with the assumption that students could be inspired by peers' ideas. Although students' openness and attention to peers' ideas are claimed to play important roles in their creativity in group settings, there is little empirical research that tests this assumption. This study examined the moderating effect of attention to peers' ideas in the relation between openness and creativity in electronic brainstorming. Participants were 91 undergraduate students who took about 10 min to complete a creative idea generation task during electronic brainstorming. Regression analyses found that students who were characterized by high openness were more creative, but only when they showed more attention to peers' ideas. This suggests that electronic brainstorming can be useful for enhancing the creativity of some students.

This study tested the interaction effect of the instructor's eye gaze (direct gaze vs. averted gaze) and facial expression (happy face vs. neutral face) on students' attention and learning performance in slide-based video lectures. University students (N = 120) participated in the experiment in a laboratory setting. The results of ANOVAs showed that students in the conditions that included the instructor's direct gaze paid greater attention to the instructor's face and paid less attention to the video lecture slides. However, direct gaze predicted better learning when the instructor had a happy facial expression. Our results suggest that the effects of an instructor's eye gaze are modulated by her facial expression in this educational context. The findings have practical implications for designing slide-based video lectures: an instructor is encouraged to look straight towards the camera with a happy expression.

Instructor behaviour is known to affect learning performance, but it is unclear which specific instructor behaviours can optimize learning. We used eye-tracking technology and questionnaires to test whether the instructor's gaze guidance affected learners' visual attention, social presence, and learning performance, using four video lectures: declarative knowledge with and without the instructor's gaze guidance and procedural knowledge with and without the instructor's gaze guidance. The results showed that the instructor's gaze guidance not only guided learners to allocate more visual attention to corresponding learning content but also increased learners' sense of social presence and learning. Furthermore, the link between the instructor's gaze guidance and better learning was especially strong for participants with a high sense of social connection with the instructor when they learned procedural knowledge. The findings lead to a strong recommendation for educational practitioners: Instructors should provide gaze guidance in video lectures for better learning performance.

Recent research on video lectures has indicated that the instructor's pointing gestures facilitate learning performance. This study examined whether the instructor's pointing gestures were superior to nonhuman cues in enhancing video lectures learning, and second, if there was a positive effect, what the underlying mechanisms of the effect might be. There were three kinds of video lectures in the study: one with the instructor's pointing gestures, one with nonhuman cues, and one without any cues. Eighty-four Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to view one of the three video lectures in a laboratory. As hypothesized, the results of analyses of variance showed that the instructor's pointing gestures improved learning performance more than the nonhuman cues and no-cues conditions. The pointing gestures directed the learners' visual attention to the relevant learning content of PowerPoint (PPT) slides in the video lecture. This suggests that the instructor's pointing gestures can be a valuable means to improve learning performance in video lectures, in particular PPT slides with much learning information.

This study tested whether seeing others' typed messages while viewing video lectures affected learners' attention and learning performance. Participants viewed one of three versions of a video lecture: (a) conventional video lecture as control; (b) video lecture with others' programmed messages appearing onscreen when the instructor was giving demonstrations on course content; (c) video lecture with others' programmed messages appearing onscreen when the instructor was posing questions. In Experiment 1, participants viewed video lectures without pause and could not post messages themselves. Eye tracking data revealed that although seeing others' messages did not decrease learners' attention to the learning content in the video, greater attention to others' messages was associated with lower retention. Furthermore, learners who viewed the conventional video lecture showed higher transfer than those who viewed either of the video lectures that included others' messages. In Experiment 2, participants viewed self-paced lectures and could post messages themselves. Experiment 2 duplicated the results of Experiment 1 in a realistic educational setting. Overall, these findings suggest that seeing others' messages during a video lecture has negative effects on learners' attention and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although more and more online courses use video lectures that feature an instructor and slides, there are few specific guidelines for designing these video lectures. This experiment tested whether the instructor should appear on the screen and whether her position on the screen (left, middle, right of the content on the slides) influenced students. Students were randomly assigned to watch one of four video lectures on the topic of sleep. The results showed that the video lectures with an instructor's presence (regardless of position) motivated students more than the video lecture without an instructor presence did. Learning performance and satisfaction were highest when the instructor appeared on the right side of the screen. Furthermore, eye movement data showed that compared to students in all other conditions, students in the middle condition paid more attention to the instructor and less attention to the learning content, and switched more between instructor and learning content. The findings highlight the positive effects of the instructor appearing on the right side of the screen in video lectures with slides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focused on how an instructor's pointing gestures and depictive gestures differentially affected learners' retention, transfer, and visual attention allocation. Eighty-five Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to view one of three video lectures in a laboratory. The videos varied in terms of the instructor's use of gesture: pointing gestures, depictive gestures, or no gestures. As hypothesized, the results showed better learning performance after the videos that included either pointing gestures or depictive gestures relative to the no gestures video; interestingly, the effect of gestures in video lectures was greater for participants with low and medium prior knowledge. In addition, the type of gesture differentially affected learners' visual attention allocation: pointing gestures directed attention to the relevant learning content of the PowerPoint slides, and depictive gestures drew learners' attention to the instructor. The findings have practical implications: instructors are encouraged to use pointing gestures and depictive gestures in video lectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instructor behaviour is known to affect learning performance, but it is unclear which specific instructor behaviours can optimize learning. We used eye‐tracking technology and questionnaires to test whether the instructor's gaze guidance affected learners' visual attention, social presence, and learning performance, using four video lectures: declarative knowledge with and without the instructor's gaze guidance and procedural knowledge with and without the instructor's gaze guidance. The results showed that the instructor's gaze guidance not only guided learners to allocate more visual attention to corresponding learning content but also increased learners' sense of social presence and learning. Furthermore, the link between the instructor's gaze guidance and better learning was especially strong for participants with a high sense of social connection with the instructor when they learned procedural knowledge. The findings lead to a strong recommendation for educational practitioners: Instructors should provide gaze guidance in video lectures for better learning performance. Lay Description: What is currently known about the subject matter: Learners reported that they had to be far more focused when watching video lecture, and the learning effectiveness of video lectures was not satisfactory in educational practice.Attentional cues are non‐content information that can timely guide learners' visual attention to the information instructor mentioned.Human cues in video lectures not only inferred instructor's gestures but also inferred eye guidance. What their paper adds to this: The instructor's gaze guidance not only increased learners' level of social presence but also timely guided learners to allocate more visual attention to corresponding learning content.The instructor's gaze guidance facilitated learners' performance when learning via video lectures. The implications of study findings for practitioners: Instructor should provide gaze guidance in video lectures for better learning performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]