Effects of Instructor's Facial Expressions on Students' Learning with Video Lectures

This study investigated whether video lectures instructed by a heightened level of expressiveness instructor were better than those instructed by a conventional level of expressiveness instructor or audio-only in promoting students' online learning, and what kind of effects do instructor's facial expressions have on students' learning. Three different types of video lectures (one with a heightened level of expressiveness instructor, one with a conventional level of expressiveness instructor and one with the instructor' audio only) were used to study the effects of instructor's facial expressions. Sixty-nine participants from Chinese Normal University were selected to learn with these video lectures. Results of this study indicated that video lectures with a heightened level of expressiveness instructor were better than those with a conventional level of expressiveness instructor and audio-only ones with regard to improving students' arousal level and learning satisfaction. Instructor's facial expressions had no significant influence on participants' short-term recall (p = 0.90), while instructor's facial expressions did influence students' medium-term recall (p = 0.03). Instructor's facial expressions played a key role in students' online learning.