Waking Up the Audience: An Analysis of 10 Most-viewed TED Talks Across 5 Subject Disciplines

Online learning has become one of the most widely adopted learning methods by many learners worldwide. TED Talks, one of the largest and most successful online video-lecture platforms, has unique features that can attract audiences from multicultural background. Through analyzing 10 of the TED videos with the highest hits, this research aims to identify the specific features of the most popular videos in terms of 1) the rhetorical techniques applied in the video content and 2) the format of the speaker's gestures. An understanding of these rhetorical techniques and speaker gestures can provide useful and practical suggestions to other instructors who are interested in attracting their students' attention in online lecture videos. 12 rhetorical techniques were identified, among which contrast and list were the most commonly used. Moreover, using body language can emphasize the core point of the speech, keeping audience concentrated and enlightened. The most commonly used body gesture by speakers when delivering their talks was open-body gestures, including movements by hands, arms, and whole body. Therefore, if teachers want to motivate their students in online courses, in order to generate greater learning outcomes, they could design the video content embracing those two rhetorical devices and apply open-body gestures while recording the course, especially hands gestures.