Visibility of Lecturers in Weblectures

Abstract

This study was conducted to see whether weblectures with audio and video of a lecturer would elicit more enjoyment and more attention than weblectures with only audio. The participant group consisted of 88 Dutch university students who saw two different web¬lectures in two different view-conditions and gave their opinion. The view-conditions were: Large lecturer/small Power-Point, Small lecturer/large PowerPoint and No lecturer/large PowerPoint. No difference was found between the conditions on enjoyment for the lecture. It is believed that other aspects of a lecture, such as lecturer appeal and story, have more influence on enjoyment than just the visibility of the lecturer. For attention a significant difference was found for the second weblectures the participants saw. Participants report more attention in the view-condition with a large lecturer and small PowerPoint, than in the other two view-conditions, while controlling for lecturer appeal, story appeal, subject relevance, radio listening and attention in a lecture-hall. There is no significant trend of visibility and attention, and lecturer appeal does not moderate the relationship between visibility and attention. Implications for these results in light of other research are discussed.