Effects of Instructors' Character in Video Lectures: Does the Age of Lecturer Influence the Students' Learning Under Pandemic COVID-19?

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of various age of online video lecturers on the learning performance of young college students, based on the previous studies about Model-Observer Similarity Hypothesis. Over the past few decades, many studies proved that learning is enhanced when the observer closely identifies with the model. Consequently, the present study aimed to examine how older or younger lecturers during two 10-minute videos influence the learning outcomes of young students (1), perceived similarity for each instructor of different ages (2), and the perceived explanation for each instructor (3), all other factors being equal. To test these hypotheses, a total of 20 (F = 14, M = 6) participants between the ages of 18 and 30 (F = 14, M = 6) were recruited from diverse college-student backgrounds and randomly assigned to two video lectures on Epigenetics and Behavioural genetics taught by either a younger or older instructor. The younger professor is less than 30 years old, whereas the elder lecturer is older than 40. The experiment's results were analysed using a paired sample t-test to evaluate these three hypotheses separately. All of the results were inconsistent with the model-observer hypothesis' expectations. It demonstrated that there is no significant difference between the learning performance of young students with regard to watch either younger or older instructor. Following that, it has been reported on the potential causes of contradictory results, limits, and prospective future applications.