Is a picture always worth 1000 words? Website images of classrooms and perceptions of the institution

Abstract

When classroom facilities are out of date, students complain (Habaci et al., in Procedia Soc Behav Sci 64:58-64 2012, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.008 ). But, before students arrive on campus, what do they know about their classrooms? Media has changed how people acquire information; websites are second only to college tours in influencing prospective students (Langmead in How college websites influence students’ web experience. eCampusNews. Today’s Innovation in Education (2013). https://www.ecampusnews.com/2013/03/21/how-college-websites-influence-students-web-experience/?all ); furthermore, photographs impact website design (Kolowich in 14 of the best college websites (And why they’re so awesome) (2019), Hubspot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-college-websites ). Can photographed classrooms influence judgments of the institution itself? In this 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, participants read a scenario about a college too far away to visit and viewed a website picture of a seminar room (unrenovated or renovated) before responding to measures of classroom satisfaction and college academic life more broadly (e.g., student retention). Institutional rank (mentioned or not), was the 2nd variable. Participants were 300 AmazonMTurk workers, 237 of whom passed manipulation checks and were retained in analyses. The classroom furnishings comprised a scale (10 items, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.879), as did questions dealing with perceptions of the institution (9 items, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.897). Analyses revealed a significant main effect for renovation status, for both the furnishings scale (p < 0.001) and perceptions of the institution (p < 0.001), but not for rank (p = 0.052), with an institution being ranked in the top 50 being viewed more positively. For renovation status, the newer classroom was viewed more positively for both scales. Classroom status also significantly influenced estimates of first-year student retention (renovation status, p < 0.001; rank, p = 0.027), with higher estimates of retention for the renovated classroom and when rank was mentioned.