The empirical evidence concerning the question whether an instructor should be presented on online lecture slides is equivocal and two lines of theoretical reasoning exist. On the one hand, the instructor may distract from the content, thereby hampering learning; on the other hand, the instructor may function as a social cue that triggers a more…

Individualized learning support is an essential part of formal educational learning processes. However, in typical large-scale educational settings, resource constraints result in limited interaction among students, teaching assistants, and lecturers. Due to this, learning success in those settings may suffer. Inspired by current technological…

The use of Experience Sampling Methods (ESM) to assess students' experiences, motivation, and emotions by sending signals to students at random or fixed time points has grown due to recent technological advances. Such methods offer several advantages, such as capturing the construct in the moment (i.e., when the events are fresh on respondents'…

Lectures in higher education often address audiences that consist of over one hundred students. In this setting, it is arguably difficult to take into account individual interests of each participant. This may result in low motivation, decreased learning outcomes as well as an overall low effectiveness of lectures. Self-determination theory…

Much effort has been put into the design of video lectures, but little attention has been paid to the social environment in which learning takes place. The present study addressed this gap by assigning Chinese undergraduate and graduate students who had passed the College English Test-4 to learn easy or difficult English vocabulary words in three…

The positivity principle states that people learn better from instructors who display positive emotions rather than negative emotions. In two experiments, students viewed a short video lecture on a statistics topic in which an instructor stood next to a series of slides as she lectured and then they took either an immediate test (Experiment 1) or…

Lecture videos are an integral part of distance education. Much has been done to investigate the effects of lecture video styles, but many of the studies have methodological issues and confounding variables. The current study focused on the amount of motion in two types of lecture videos (hand-drawn and narration-over-PowerPoint) and investigated…

The aim of this repeated measures study was to examine an anonymous student feedback system (delivered using clickers) versus a public student feedback system (delivered using flashcards) on 52 graduate learners' metacognition and academic achievement scores. Three dimensions of metacognition were examined in a large lecture setting, including…

Video lectures are one of the primary learning resources embedded in e-learning environments. Many universities prepare video lectures and share them as open course materials with students. In order to make the learning process more efficient and effective, it is very important to design and personalize those learning resources for learners,…

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are web-based software systems that enable students to interact with their teachers and classmates, access learning resources without restriction of time and place, and use cutting-edge Information and Communication Technologies. Nevertheless, VLEs are costly to develop and maintain. Clearly, many features of…

This paper reviews five ways to increase the effectiveness of instructional video and one way not to use instructional video. People learn better from an instructional video when the onscreen instructor draws graphics on the board while lecturing (dynamic drawing principle), the onscreen instructor shifts eye gaze between the audience and the…

This study employed speech-enabled language translation (SELT) technology in lectures presented in English as a medium of instruction (EMI). Previous research had students viewing pre-recorded lectures with incorporated content translations in controlled laboratory settings. In contrast, students in the present study experienced live lectures in…

Quality teaching in large classes is generally challenging to achieve. In large classes, there are fewer possibilities for students to interact with the teacher and with each other; the motivation to study decreases as does the possibility for receiving feedback during the learning process. This can result, among other things, in reduced…

To promote student learning and bolster student success, higher education institutions are increasingly creating large active learning classrooms to replace traditional lecture halls. Although there have been many efforts to examine the effects of those classrooms on learning outcomes, there is paucity of research that can inform the design and…

Video "podcast" recordings of lectures are popular with students, but are often associated with a decrease in attendance and little increase in performance. Assessment has generally focused on the class as a whole, potentially masking benefits to different subgroups. In this study, conducted in 2 sections of a large active-learning…