The body in online teaching: presence or absence of gaze and gestures

Abstract In this note, we analyse the use of gestures and gazes by a group of university lecturers while distance teaching. We investigated the video lessons produced and recorded by 22 lecturers, with the purpose of spotting the presence of signalling behaviours such as glances aimed at drawing the attention to parts of the screen, or pointing gestures, or ad hoc devices such as the mouse tracker or text highlighting. The guiding hypothesis behind this study is that the introduction of new tech devices for distance teaching might amplify the difficulties in signalling and attention guidance by the teachers, thus reducing the efficacy of such signalling as aids for comprehension and learning. The data we collected appear to support this hypothesis and induce interesting suggestions and guidelines towards avoiding the spotted problems.