Ask the Eyetrackers: Any Training Implications?

Q: We are an educational institution that works with trainers and faculty to understand the issues to consider in developing webpages and course materials for the online environment.

In the studies you have conducted, do you have any direct connection to learners and how they read material in an online class? We certainly encourage faculty developers to write concisely, chunk their material, and make everything consistent.

Any findings you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Judith Norton

A: The Eyetrack III research focused on news websites. As a journalism institution, The Poynter Institute has not conducted eyetracking research on learning and training.

However, some of the findings within Eyetrack III may be helpful for you. I encourage you to skim through the findings and observations on this website and look for things that might logically carry over to Web training.

For example, we observed that short paragraphs on articles got approximately twice the reading time and number of fixations as longer paragraphs. We found that rules and white space often serve as barriers between editorial content and advertising. We observed how small photographs often are "invisible" to most people, while medium-sized ones see more than twice the eye fixations.

Those observations and more might have implications for webpages designed for training.

Steve Outing, Eyetrack III co-project manager, Poynter senior editor

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