Exploring the impact of nonverbal social behavior on learning outcomes in instructional video design

Online education has become increasingly popular in recent years, and video lectures have emerged as a common instructional format. While the importance of instructors' nonverbal social cues such as gaze, facial expression, and gestures for learning progress in face-to-face teaching is well-established, their impact on instructional videos is not fully understood. Most studies on nonverbal social cues in instructional videos focus on isolated cues rather than considering multimodal nonverbal behavior patterns and their effects on the learning progress. This study examines the role of instructors' nonverbal immediacy (a construct capturing multimodal nonverbal behaviors that reduce psychological distance) in video lectures with respect to learners' cognitive, affective, and motivational outcomes. We carried out an eye-tracking experiment with 87 participants (Mage = 24.11, SD = 4.80). Results of multilevel path analyses indicate that high nonverbal immediacy substantially increases learners' state motivation and enjoyment, but does not affect cognitive learning. Analyses of learners' eye movements show that learners allocate more attention to the instructor than to the learning material with increasing levels of nonverbal immediacy displayed by the instructor. The study highlights the importance of considering the role of multimodal nonverbal behavior patterns in online education and provides insights for effective video lecture design.