South China Normal University
China
In online courses represented by MOOC, video lectures are the most popular learning material used by learners. Therefore, how to design teaching videos according to the type of knowledge and features of learning content in order to efficiently deliver information and improve the learning effect has become a hot topic that is worth discussing. “Concepts” are one of the typical features of descriptive knowledge and always need to be learned, so understanding the learning process for concepts can help teacher to know how to design video lectures to support online learning of such knowledge. This research explores the differences in eye movements among learners who received different test scores after watching a video. This paper also aims to identify how learners process the video.
The participants in this experiment were 26 university students who watched a video lecture about conceptual knowledge. The subjects watched a six-minute video, and then participated in the test after they had finishing viewing it. Their eye movement behaviour during video- watching was recorded by an eye tracker; and data on the position of the pupils, time and the paths of eye movements were collected.
The results indicated that: (1) in a video lecture on conceptual knowledge, the time that learners’ attention was distributed on the four elements of the concept (name, definition, attribute and example) was relatively average and stable; (2) the key parts of the video design (put in red and highlighted) markedly attracted learners’ attention; (3) there was no significant difference in eye movement between learners with high and low test scores; and (4) there were significant differences between male and female subjects in the average fixation time.
From the findings, we learned that the key content of video lectures should be clearly marked and examples should be used to help learners to understand the concepts when designing video lecture on conceptual knowledge.