The Impact of Lecture Fluency and Technology Fluency on Students' Online Learning and Evaluations of Instructors

General Audience Summary Advances in technology in recent years have led to changes in students' experiences in college courses. Students can take classes, and even complete degrees, entirely online. As such, it is important to explore how students learn from online lectures and how various factors influence students' experiences. The goal of the present study was to investigate how two factors influence students' online learning. First, when watching a lecture, the instructor can vary in how fluently they present the information. Some instructors present information in a fluent manner where they speak clearly and confidently. Other instructors present information in a disfluent manner, where they speak less confidently and stumble over their words. Second, in an online context, technology quality can vary depending on the students' internet connection and computer graphics. Thus, technology fluency (e.g., visual quality) may be high for some students and low for others. We explored how these two factors-lecture fluency and technology fluency-impacted students' learning, perceptions of their learning, and evaluations of the instructor. Students watched an online lecture that was delivered in a fluent or disfluent manner and that was presented with good visual quality or poor visual quality. After watching the lecture, they rated the instructor and their learning and completed a test. Students' learning was unaffected by lecture fluency or technology fluency. However, students who watched the fluent lecture thought that they learned the material better and rated the instructor as more effective compared to students who watched the disfluent lecture. Thus, although lecture fluency does not impact students' actual learning in an online context, it can bias their perceptions of their learning and their evaluations of their instructor. Given the increasing popularity of online courses, it is important to explore how factors inherent to online lectures influence students' learning and metacognition. We evaluated how lecture fluency (via instructor delivery style) and technology fluency (via visual quality) influence students' learning, perceptions of learning, and evaluations of the instructor. Students watched an online lecture that was delivered in a fluent or disfluent manner (Experiments 1 and 2) presented with good or poor visual quality (Experiment 2). Next, students judged their learning, answered evaluation questions, and completed a test over the lecture. Although lecture fluency did not impact learning, students who watched a fluent lecture reported learning more and rated the instructor as more effective than did students who watched the disfluent lecture. Technology fluency did not impact any outcome. Thus, lecture fluency (but not technology fluency) can influence students' perceptions, but not their actual learning, in an online context.