Engagement in Online Learning: a Pilot Study

<p><strong>Context and relevance.</strong> Research utilizing computer vision methods represents a novel, promising, and highly relevant direction in education. It opens up opportunities for applying neuroscience to the development of scientifically grounded pedagogical approaches aimed at improving the quality of education. <strong>Objective.</strong> This study aims to determine the relationship between the visual design features of educational video content and engagement components (both cognitive and emotional). <strong>Hypothesis.</strong> The psychophysiological components of students' cognitive and emotional engagement during the viewing of educational video content (in the context of online learning) are positively associated with a polylogic format of material presentation in video lectures, the use of concrete examples, and the presence of questions directed by the lecturer to the audience. <strong>Methods and materials.</strong> During the viewing of video lectures and the completion of subsequent tasks, changes in skin electrical activity and gaze movement were recorded. Skin electrical activity was measured using the NTrend-BIO biobracelet, while gaze coordinates were tracked using the NTrend-ET500 eye tracker. Based on the collected data, standard metr<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-ansi-language: RU; mso-fareast-language: RU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">биобраслет</span>ics of emotional engagement, valence changes, attention, and interest were calculated using the "Neurobarometer" software package (developed by AO "Neurotrend"). <strong>Results.</strong> The experiment revealed a relationship between cognitive engagement and the visual design features of educational video content. Attention metrics were significantly higher among participants who watched video lectures with questions addressed directly to them. Emotional engagement metrics were significantly higher when participants completed tasks than during video viewing. Eye-tracking metrics further demonstrated that respondents focused more on video sequences featuring a single lecturer or slides rather than on dialogic/polylogic formats with multiple instructors. <strong>Conclusions. </strong>The pilot study provided preliminary data suggesting that engagement levels are influenced by specific visual design features of educational video content. These findings can be taken into account when developing an "ideal model" for online courses.</p>