Introduction: The processes of learning and teaching are fundamentally linked. Therefore, to truly understand how both processes are interconnected we must first define each term separately. Learning can be defined as “the act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skills” (Conner 1997). Teaching is much more than the simple delivery of information as it also involves knowing how to grab an audience’s attention and keep them engaged in order for them to truly recall what is being taught to them in a near future. There are several theories that try to explain this complex dynamic by proposing several learning theories and learning styles as to how people learn best. Some popular theories of learning are behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and more recently connectivism. The method a person implements during learning cannot be directly measured via test results. Therefore, we are investigating whether students’ eye movements are potential indicators of how the students learn.
Methods: The visual information presented on the computer screen were a series of 6 black and white line drawings of cells that are either oblong or square shaped. The experiment was divided into a Baseline phase, a Training phase, and a Testing phase. The subjects are first asked to visually explore each image during the Baseline phase. Subjects in the Experimental group are then trained to use salient features to identify cell images, which have been assigned a number 1-6 while the Control group received no training but were shown the same numbered cells with no labeled key features. In the Testing phase of the experiment, both groups were asked to identify cells by number. It is during this phase that the subjects see all six images three times but in different orientations: a 180-degree flip, a horizontal flip, and the original or same orientation as the baseline.
Hypothesis: We postulate that an educational intervention will result in an increase in the accuracy of answers, an increase in the amount of time a subject takes to select an answer and a decrease in the likelihood that subjects will change their answer when asked to identify a certain image.
Results: The main variables of interest were: accuracy of answer, time to answer and number of times the answer was changed. On average and when analyzing individual images, the Experimental group scored higher than the Control group especially for images in Oblong 1 and Square 1. The opposite occurred for images Square 2 and Square 3 where the Control group scored higher than the Experimental group. Both groups had the same number of correct answers for image Oblong 2. Looking at the effect of orientation, it was found that across all three orientations the Experimental group correctly identified the majority of the images more often than did the Control group. It was also found that only the horizontal orientation for Oblong 3 (p=0.0210) showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups; for this image, the Experimental group had significantly more correct answers. When considering time to answer, on average and for the majority of the images (Oblong 1, Oblong 3, Square 1, Square 2, and Square 3) the Control group answered faster than the Experimental group. A statistically significant difference (p=0.010) between groups was also found when comparing all of the individual subjects’ time to answer in each group across all orientations as the Experimental took longer to select an answer than the Control group. Image Square 1 also showed a statistical significant difference (0.008) when all three different orientations are pooled as well as in each individual orientation (180: p=0.018, horizontal: p=0.012, and original: p=0.003) as the Experimental took longer to select an answer than the Control group. Lastly, it was found that the Control group changed their answers more often than the Experimental group for the Oblong images, whereas the Experimental group changed their answers more often than the Control group for the majority of the Square images.
Conclusions: These results do indicate, to some extent, an improvement on both the performance and the time to answer when subjects are explicitly taught what key features to fixate on. We speculate that guided instruction allows the subject to spend more time on such features and easier recognition of the images.