Mediated communication technologies, conveying verbal and nonverbal cues, are more and more employed in learning activities.
Nevertheless, their effects on teacher-student interaction have been not clearly stated yet. Through two experimental studies,
we investigated on the effects of nonverbal communication cues (kinesic and ostensive-inferential) on synchronous mediated
tutoring dialogue, in which a tutor and a student communicate through audio-video communication tools. The outcomes show that
kinesic cues lead tutor to monitor more carefully learner’s ongoing task and to encourage much more them, while ostensive-inferential
cues improve learner’s task performance and lead both tutor and student to focus better on tutoring speech acts.
Keywords audio-video mediated communication - nonverbal communication - kinesic cues - ostensive-inferential cues - tutoring dialogue