Comparing the camera shot styles of video lectures: Close-up versus broad framing of whiteboard and lecturer

Many educational organizations are motivated to create and share instructional videos, but there are no guidelines about the presentation styles. In practice, the presentation style of video lectures ranges from simple video capturing of classroom teaching, up to highly elaborate authoring of video presentations that include closeups and video-cuts of instructors, slides, animations, and interactive drawing boards. In particular, there is limited research about the effects of each presentation style on student learning performance and attitudes. In this work, we examine the effects of video presentation styles in supporting the teaching of mathematics in the secondary education. In addition to a control group that studied through a paper-book, two groups of students attended two distinct styles of video lectures: 1) video capture of class teaching (Talking head style), and 2) close-up video capture of an interactive drawing board with voice-over (Khan style). The participants of our study consisted of 36 students (15 boys and 21 girls, 16 years old), who received the respective three treatments (paper book, talking head, khan style), over the course of three math modules in three weeks’ time. We found that learning effects show up only after the second week and that the Talking Head style was more effective than the book for complex topics.