Exploring Instructor Presence in Instructional Videos: Effects on Learning and Emotional Engagement

This study investigated the effects of instructor presence in instructional videos on learning and learners’ emotional engagement. Sixty-six learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at a Turkish university watched an English instructional video with either high-level instructor presence (white-board), low-level instructor presence (picture-in-picture) or instructor absence (voice-over). Learning from the video was assessed via a transfer test and learners’ affective responses to the post-intervention questionnaire were analyzed in terms of emotional engagement. The quantitative findings suggested that learning occurred in all video conditions, yet the levels of learning did not differ across video styles. The qualitative findings revealed that learners were more positively engaged with whiteboard and picture-in-picture videos. The findings also revealed six main factors underlying learners’ emotional engagement: social cues, lifelike learning experience, familiarity, perceived seriousness, clarity of content, and affordances of technology. This study also offered a list of video styles in terms of instructor presence.