Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

• S. Veisikhani ¹
• F. Amin ²

¹ Public administration group, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran,

² Leadership and human capital group, Faculty of Public administration and Organizational Sciences, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Learning is the most important goal of any educational system, which is influenced by many factors such as the type of thinking, educational content, learning style, learner's motivation and interest, personality traits, suitable environment, family factors, society, and the quality of the instructor. Monitoring learners' visual attention with the help of eye tracking technology provides information about how they interact with various forms and educational content, as well as how they learn. In general, it can be said that whenever we need information that shows human cognitive processes during various activities, observing eye movements along with other data that are referred to as objective measurement tools can open the way for our research. This research aims to investigate the effect of a number of factors such as the type of educational content (visual or written), learning style (visual or reading/writing), personality type (extrovert or introvert) and visual attention (fixation duration and fixation count), on increasing or reducing the learning rate of management students, designed in the electronic learning space.
Methods: This research employed a pre-experimental approach to examine the topic. The study's statistical population consisted of management students at various levels in Tehran's state universities. Through simple non-probability voluntary sampling, 44 students were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental groups: recipients of visual and written educational content. Inclusion criteria were enrollment in management programs and willingness to participate. Data was collected using four online questionnaires (course exam, Goldberg's Big Five personality traits, VARK learning styles, demographics), and a Tobii fixed eye-tracking device in a laboratory setting. Inferential statistics like independent samples t-tests and Pearson correlation were used for data analysis and hypothesis testing. Moderation and mediation roles were assessed using Andrew Hayes' PROCESS macro.
In order to ensure the validity of the test and the eye tracking device, the four steps of explaining the purpose of the test, calibration, performing the main test and also getting feedback from the participants after the test were done. Also, in order to establish the validity and reliability of the test, the subjects participated in the test without prior knowledge and knowledge about the subject of education. On the other hand, VARK's learning styles questionnaires and Goldberg's 5 big personality factors had the required validity and reliability due to their standard nature, and the test questions also had internal validity, form and content, and its reliability was based on the Coder-Richardson method, number 0.7627 was reported, which indicates its proper reliability.
Findings: People with a visual learning style would learn better with visual content and would have more attention (concentration), while people with a reading-writing learning style would concentrate and learn better when working with textual and written content. Also, the learning rate of extroverted people increased in written content and introverted people in visual content. But their visual attention may increase or decrease. On the other hand, the mediation relationships, visual attention, in the relationship between the type of educational content and the learning rate, were not statistically confirmed.
Conclusion: Based on the findings of the research, people with visual learning style or introversion learned more when faced with visual educational content. Also, as regards people with reading/writing learning style or extroversion characteristic, their learning improved when faced with written educational content. It should be noted that the extent of learning in the face of an electronic educational content was not a function of visual attention, and it is likely that it depends on other factors such as what was found in this research, i.e. personality traits or learning style of people, how the person acts and how to learn. Of course, more attention and focus on educational issues may lead to more learning, but the problem is that in all people, this attention is not visual attention and it does not happen by seeing, and it can be different from one person to another.

Keywords

• visual attention
• learning
• learning style
• personality

Main Subjects

• Blended Learning

COPYRIGHTS 
© 2025 The Author(s).  This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)