Examining The Influence of Interruptions in Online Learning on Student's Perceptions And Comprehension

Abstract

The presented research focuses on examining the influence of interruptions in online learning on student's perceptions and comprehension. We conducted an experiment with 45 participants. Each participant watched one lecture that belonged to one of the two experimental groups, a lecture with interruptions or a lecture without interruptions. While watching the lecture, the eye movements of the participants were recorded using an eye tracking device. After watching the lecture, the participants were asked to answer two questionnaires, knowledge questionnaire and subjective questionnaire. We found that interruptions do harm the comprehension of the delivered material when they occur and moreover, they cause an "after affects", harming the comprehension of the studied material even at times they do not occur at all. In addition, we found that interruptions attract the student's attention when they occur and at the same time causing a feeling of aversion and a desire to avoid focusing on them. Which may eventually cause negative subjective perceptions and to harm the understanding of the studied material. The world of online learning has developed a lot in 2020 and in fact the whole world has been forced to switch to online learning. Therefore, this technology must be optimized and improved.