The Impact of Lecture Fluency and Technology Fluency on Students’ Online Learning and Evaluations of Instructors

Abstract

Given the increasing popularity of online courses, it is important to explore how factors inherent to online lectures influence students’ learning and metacognition. We evaluated how lecture fluency (via instructor delivery style) and technology fluency (via visual quality) influence students’ learning, perceptions of learning, and evaluations of the instructor. Students watched an online lecture that was delivered in a fluent or disfluent manner (Experiments 1 and 2) presented with good or poor visual quality (Experiment 2). Next, students judged their learning, answered evaluation questions, and completed a test over the lecture. Although lecture fluency did not impact learning, students who watched a fluent lecture reported learning more and rated the instructor as more effective than did students who watched the disfluent lecture. Technology fluency did not impact any outcome. Thus, lecture fluency (but not technology fluency) can influence students’ perceptions, but not their actual learning, in an online context