Instructor’s position affects learning from video lectures in Chinese context: an eye-tracking study

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.