The Impact of Camera Shot and Background Design for MOOC Videos on Student Recall and Flow Experience

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of the camera shot and background design in MOOC videos on university students’ recall and flow experience (including clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration on task, sense of control, action-awareness merging, loss of self- conscious, altered sense of time, telepresence and positive affect). Ninety-eight university students in southern Taiwan were voluntarily recruited as participants and randomly assigned into four groups with different video design: 1) Single camera with head-on frontal view and the informal lab as the background, 2) single camera with three-quarter shots and the informal lab as the background, 3) two cameras with alternating full and three-quarter frontal shots and the informal lab as the background, 4) single camera with head-on frontal view and the blue screen as the background. Participants were asked to watch the video and complete survey. The findings showed that significant differences existed among groups on both learner achievement and flow experience. We found that 1) the video recorded by two cameras with alternating shot benefited recalling, and 2) the video recorded by a single camera with three-quarter shots and the informal lab as the background benefited learner sense of control. The superiority of these two types of videos shows learners’ cognitive and attitudinal preference of camera shot design for MOOCs. These results could serve as a reference for future work on MOOC video or online instructional video design