Showing Face in Video Instruction: Effects on Information Retention, Visual Attention, and Affect

The amount of online educational content is rapidly increasing, particularly in the form of video lectures. The goal is to design video instruction to facilitate an experience that maximizes learning and satisfaction. A widely used but understudied design element in video instruction is the overlay of a small video of the instructor over lecture slides. We conducted an experiment with eye-tracking and recall tests to investigate how adding the instructor's face to video instruction affects information retention, visual attention, and affect. Participants strongly preferred instruction with the face and perceived it as more educational. They spent about 41% of time looking at the face and switched between the face and slide every 3.7 seconds. Consistent with prior work, no significant difference in short- and medium-term recall ability was found. Including the face in video instruction is encouraged based on learners' positive affective response. More fine-grained analytics combining eye-tracking with detailed learning assessment could shed light on the mechanisms by which the face aids or hinders learning.