Voice in Digital Education: The Impact of Instructor's Perceived Age and Gender on Student Learning and Evaluation

In this study, undergraduate and graduate students were randomly exposed to one of five digital tutorials; four experimental tutorials presenting identical anatomy content with narrators of different gender and age, and a control tutori al featuring origami (paper folding) instructions without audio. Learning outcomes were measured by pre‐quiz vs. post‐quiz comparisons using repeated measures MANOVA. Implicit bias was analyzed by evaluation response comparisons using repeated measures MANOVA and three‐way MANOVA. Post‐quiz scores increased significantly in the four experimental groups (P <  0.05) but not in the control (P = 0.99). The increased performance was not statistically different across the four experimental groups (P >  0.26), suggesting that learning occurred irrespective of the instructor gender and age. Students' evaluations were consistently higher for the experimental resources than the control. There was no significant difference in evaluations across the four experimental groups but compared to the control , younger male and younger female narrators received significantly higher ratings for approachability, acceptance, inclusivity, and care for student learning. The study highlights important considerations for digital resources development and interpretation of student evaluations.
Source: Anatomical Sciences Education - Category: Anatomy Authors: Tags: Research Report Source Type: research