The instructor’s presence on the screen has become a popular feature in the video lectures of online learning and has drawn increasing research interest. Studies on the instructor presence effect of video lectures mainly focused on the features of the instructor, and few have taken learners’ differences, such as gender, into consideration. The current study examined whether male and female learners differed in their learning performance and eye movement features when learning video lectures with and without the instructor’s presence. All participants (N = 64) were asked to watch three different types of video lectures: audio-video without instructor presence (AV), picture-video with instructor presence (PV), and video-video with instructor presence (VV). They watched nine videos, three of each condition, and completed a reading comprehension test after each video. Their eye movement data were simultaneously collected when they watched these videos. Results showed that learners gained better outcomes after watching the videos with a talking instructor (VV) than those with the instructor’s picture (PV) or without the instructor (AV). This finding suggests that the dynamic presence of the instructor in video lectures could enhance learning through increased social presence and agency. Gender differences were found in their attention allocation, but not behavioral learning performance. When watching the videos with a talking instructor (VV), female learners dwelt longer on the instructor, while males transited more between the instructor and the text. Our results highlight the value of instructor presence in video lectures and call for more comprehensive explorations of gender differences in online learning outcomes and attention distribution.

This current study explores the influence of learners’ working memory capacity (WMC) on the facilitation effect of an instructor’s presence during video lectures. Sixty-four undergraduates were classified into high and low WMC groups based on their performance in an operation span task. They watched three types of video lectures on unfamiliar topics in a random order: video lectures with an instructor’s voiceover but without presence (VN), video lectures with the instructor’s face picture (VP), and video lectures with the same instructor talking (VV). We collected their eye movement data during the video lectures and their learning performance in the comprehension tests following each video. Two-way ANOVA and post-hoc analyses showed that the instructor’s presence significantly improved comprehension performance in only the low WMC group. They allocated more attention to the instructor’s face picture and talking head than the high WMC group. Our results highlight the value of the instructor’s presence as a social cue in video lectures, which is particularly beneficial for learners with a low WMC.

The current replication study aims to examine the effects of learners’ attention to lexical and grammatical forms on meaning comprehension while listening to a passage in Spanish. The registered protocol and materials in the aural mode from Morgan-Short et al.’s (2018) multisite replication study were used, with first language (L1) Chinese–second language (L2) English participants (N=122) learning Spanish as the third language (L3). The results partially reproduced the previous findings that there was no effect of attending to a lexical item (sol) on meaning comprehension. However, a small to medium effect was found on comprehension scores for simultaneously attending to a grammatical form (la). This finding reveals a site-specific effect with learners from different L1 backgrounds, suggesting that learners’ attending to a grammatical form absent in their L1 is detrimental to their meaning comprehension even if this form exists in their earlier learned L2.