Online teaching methods effectiveness in students’ focus retention and lecture enjoyment

Abstract: Online teaching has become more common during the past decades as technological advancements provide new education possibilities. New technology also gives teachers new ways to conduct teaching. Today, there are many different teaching methods which can be utilized. Which teaching methods should be used in order to retain students’ focus during lectures? Which ones should be used to improve students’ enjoyment of lectures? This thesis studies these questions through an eye tracking experiment. Test subjects watched short lecture clips, each using a different teaching while being recorded using eye tracking. In addition, the test subjects answered a questionnaire regarding lecture enjoyment. Based from the results, it is found that focus during and enjoyment of online lectures seems to be mostly dictated by cognitive load. Teaching methods which use some sort of technique to reduce the amount of cognitive load are better at keeping students focused. Furthermore, students seem to enjoy teaching methods which uses a chalk board more.