Effects of Lecture Fluency and Instructor Experience on Students' Judgments of Learning, Test Scores, and Evaluations of Instructors

Students' judgments of learning (JOLs) are often driven by cues that are not diagnostic of actual learning. One powerful cue that can mislead JOLs is lecture fluency-the degree to which an instructor delivers a smooth, confident, and well-polished lecture. Lecture fluency often inflates JOLs, but has no effect on actual learning. The limited research so far, however, has not systematically explored the role of instructor experience, which may moderate the effects of lecture fluency. In two experiments, students viewed a video-recorded lecture of a fluent or disfluent lecture, and beforehand were informed that the instructor was experienced or inexperienced. Afterward, students made a JOL estimating how much they had learned, answered several evaluation questions, and took a test. Significant effects of lecture fluency, but not instructor experience, occurred whereby lecture fluency inflated JOLs but not test scores. As well, students more often based their JOLs on lecture fluency than instructor experience. The fluent lecture received more favorable evaluations than the disfluent lecture, including students' increased interest in the material and willingness to attend class, suggesting that fluent instruction might benefit learning in indirect ways that are not reflected in test scores. Public Significance Statement Students' evaluations of their own learning can be misled by cues that are highly intuitive but unreliable. The fluency with which an instructor delivers a lecture (i.e., in a smooth and well-polished manner), but not the perceived experience of the instructor, coincides positively with students' impressions of the instructor and how much they feel they have learned, but does not reliably enhance learning, raising questions about the influence of certain instructor characteristics that have long been considered qualities of effective teaching.