Seeing the face and observing the actions: The effects of nonverbal cues on mediated tutoring dialogue

Abstract

Mediated communication technologies, conveying verbal and nonverbal cues, are more and more employed in learning activities. Nevertheless, their effects on teacher-student interaction have been not clearly stated yet. Through two experimental studies, we investigated on the effects of nonverbal communication cues (kinesic and ostensive-inferential) on synchronous mediated tutoring dialogue, in which a tutor and a student communicate through audio-video communication tools. The outcomes show that kinesic cues lead tutor to monitor more carefully learner's ongoing task and to encourage much more them, while ostensive-inferential cues improve learner's task performance and lead both tutor and student to focus better on tutoring speech acts. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.