Examining the effects of the virtual ınstructor's emotional state on learners in a multimedia learning material via eye tracking method

With the advancement of technology, interest in different learning resources has increased; the use of multimedia has increased, especially in the world of education. Newspapers, books, information sources, courses are transferred to electronic media. The tendency towards online resources is increasing in terms of cost, time limitation and access to more resources. The increase in the use of multimedia in education has led researchers to examine more variables to reveal effective designs. Studies on modern educational practices and transformations have accelerated. In this study, it is aimed to evaluate the emotional expressions of virtual tutorials used in multimedia in terms of learning, focus, motivation and positive and negative emotions. For this purpose, two different multimedia environments with virtual tutorials with positive and negative emotional expressions were designed. During the experimental process in which 68 voluntary participants from university students were randomly assigned to positive and negative groups, records were taken with an eye-tracking device. Appropriate stimulating environments and situations necessary for learning to be effective can be seen among the subjects studied. In today's world where video-based teaching is gaining momentum, studies are being conducted to establish some basic principles that will make learning effective in video-based instructional resources. In which stimulating environment and with what kind of emotion the content should be presented emerges as an area of investigation. Two-group pretest-posttest experimental model was used in the study. The participants consisted of 68 volunteer students from different programs of Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa. As data collection tools; learning test, Motivation Scale for Teaching in Higher Education, Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and the opinion part of the experimental process were used. Both groups were administered a pre-test before the application and a post-test after the application. As a result of the research, it was determined that the data were normally distributed. There was no significant difference between the Positive-Negative Emotion, Learning Motivation and Learning Test scores of the participants who watched the video content narrated by the virtual instructor with positive emotions and the participants who watched the video content narrated by the virtual instructor with negative emotions. When the emotional states of the groups before and after the application were analyzed, it was observed that the negative emotion scores of the group watching the video content narrated by the virtual tutor with negative emotion increased after the application. On the other hand, it was observed that the negative emotions of the group watching the video content narrated by the virtual instructor with positive emotions decreased after the application. In general, the positive emotion averages of those who watched the video content narrated by the virtual instructor with positive emotions were higher than the positive emotions of those who watched the video content narrated by the virtual instructor with negative emotions.