Distracted by a talking head? An eye tracking study on the effects of instructor presence in learning videos with animated graphic slides

Abstract

There are still unanswered questions concerning the optimal design of educational videos, for instance with regard to the visibility of a talking head next to the learning content. Although visible talking heads in educational videos may stimulate deeper processing, they can also distract from the visual learning content. The current eye tracking study investigated how a talking head presented next to stepwise appearing (i.e., animated) graphic-based content affected learners' eye movements, learning, and ratings (e.g., social presence). Ninety-six university students participated in the experiment. We used a within-subjects design to vary whether a talking head was present in short learning videos with narrated slides. Our results revealed that the talking head both reduced fixation duration of the overall content and fixation duration and number of fixations of newly appearing content. Further, time to first fixation of newly appearing content was delayed by the talking head. However, the talking head did not affect learning outcomes (knowledge test and picture recognition task performance) and there was no mediation by the fixation duration of the content. Additionally, learners indicated higher social presence ratings for videos including a talking head, but we observed no differences in ratings of perceived learning, satisfaction, perceived difficulty, and invested mental effort due to the talking head. The talking head strongly influenced learners' eye movements by reducing fixations of the learning content but did not cause any learning losses. We discuss implications and limitations of the findings also in view of future research.