The Effect of Stimulus Variation on Learning from Lecture

Abstract

Teacher mobility, gesturing, and pausing while presenting a lecture was examined in light of its effect upon student recall of factual information contained in a lecture. Twelve teachers and forty-eight students were randomly selected from the Micro-Teaching Clinic at the University of Massachusetts to participate in the study. Increases in the frequency of stimulus variation on the part of the secondary teachers resulted in improved student performance on both lecture tests, r=.62 and r=.92, the latter significant at the .15 level. Conversely, increases in the frequency of stimulus variation on the part of elementary teachers resulted in lowered student performance on both lecture tests, r=-.91 and r=-.97, significant at the . 15 and .1 levels respectively.