Effects of lecture video styles on engagement and learning

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 motion’s effect on learners’ perceived engagement and learning outcome. Participants watched lecture videos with varying amount of within-video motion, rated the engagement levels of the videos, and completed recall and knowledge transfer tasks. The study was conducted in a laboratory setting that simulated an online learning environment. Our findings indicate that a hand-drawn type of lecture video was rated as most engaging and supported recall performance of individuals with low prior knowledge of content materials. Knowledge transfer performance was affected by learners’ prior knowledge but not by the amount of motion in lecture videos. Pedagogical implications are described in the discussion section.