Tutorials in eLearning—How Presentation Affects Outcomes

The presentation of learning materials affects how we learn. In this paper, we use eye tracking to investigate how different sequences of text and test questions affect performance outcomes, eye movements, and reading behavior for first (L1) English language and second (L2) English language readers. We show that different presentation sequences induce different performance outcomes, eye movements, and reading behavior. The sequence can affect how a participant reads the text as well as their perceptions of how well they understood what they read. For instance, if questions and text are not shown together, this improves participants’ ability to accurately perceive their comprehension and promotes thorough reading. Alternatively, showing questions before the text promotes skimming behavior. Importantly, the presentation sequence affects both L1 and L2 readers in the same way. We observe that L2 reader take longer to read text but have the same comprehension levels as L1 readers; this difference comes primarily from longer fixation durations. The results from this paper can be used to design learning materials in eLearning environments to influence how students interact with the learning environment as well as how they learn. The purpose of this investigation is to make informative decisions about designing adaptive eLearning environments.