Celebration of Scholars
Instructor Presence in Instructional Video: Student Recall, Perception, and Anxiety
Name:
Kevin Carter
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Kenosha
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Senior thesis
Funding: External funding
Name:
Nora Nickels
Department: Natural Science
Type of research: Senior thesis
Funding: External funding
Name:
Jessica Sendef
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Illinois
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Senior thesis
Funding: External funding
Abstract
Online education has become increasingly important over the past decade, especially given the current COVID-19 pandemic. In terms of research on the effectiveness of digital education on student recall and perception, presence of the instructor, the actions of the instructor, and the difficulty of the material have been examined as important variables. Although instructor presence does not seem to facilitate or compromise digital learning, it has been suggested that digital instructor presence may improve student perceptions in terms of their educational or learning experience, and that the benefits of instructor presence may be dependent on difficulty of the content being delivered. In order to build upon this research, this project sought to extend upon these recent findings, while focusing on educational content that is specific to psychology as well as another dependent variable of subjective anxiety after learning. Using Qualtrics software, participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups, based on asynchronous digital lecture content (statistics vs. psychology of stress) and the presence or absence of instructor face. After watching an asynchronous video lesson, recall, perception, and state anxiety was measured. For recall accuracy, there was a significant main effect of time point, with post tests having higher recall accuracy scores than pre tests, and a significant interaction effect between time point and topic, such that recall accuracy at post test for stress topic was higher than recall accuracy at post test for statistics topic. There was no significant main or interaction effect of face on recall accuracy. For perception of learning, there was a main effect for face, with face-present condition leading to higher perception of learning experience regardless of topic. As COVID-19 is heavily impacting the world and how education is handled at all levels, it is important to fully understand how online learning affects overall education and how that differs between each subject. Anxiety that may come with online learning can play an important role in learning and success in school. Using these methods can help us understand how a combination of important factors can increase or decrease a student’s success in an online learning environment.Submit date: March 12, 2021, 12:50 a.m.