Impact of showing a male instructor’s face on female students’ perceived social presence, satisfaction, and comprehension in distance education in a conservative, gender-segregated culture

To overcome a shortage of female faculty members for teaching female students in a gender-segregated educational system, Saudi Arabian universities have assigned male faculty members to teach female students through videoconferencing. However, female students often do not prefer videoconferencing, and it does not reach an optimal level of satisfaction. Although students’ ability to see an instructor’s face might diminish this negativity, Saudi cultural norms do not encourage men to show women their faces. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the impact on female students’ perceived social presence, satisfaction, and comprehension of showing male faculty members’ faces during videoconferencing. The study used the quantitative method of a between-group quasi-experimental posttest-only design. Lasting 6 weeks and including 27 female graduate students, the study administered six tests to examine participants’ comprehension and an online questionnaire to measure their perceived social presence and satisfaction. No differences between control and experimental groups were found for perceived social presence, satisfaction, or comprehension. Thus, researchers and practitioners should pay attention to opposite-gender instructor, segregated campuses, synchronized courses, gathering of students in same physical context, and conservative culture to provide effective distance education for gender-segregated institutions, as well as students with gender-segregated backgrounds when engaging in non-segregated distance education in the globalized world.