Effects of instructor's facial expressions on students' learning with video lectures

Abstract 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 = .90), while instructor's facial expressions did influence students' medium‐term recall ( p = .03). Instructor's facial expressions played a key role in students' online learning.