A familiar peer improves students’ behavior patterns, attention, and performance when learning from video lectures

Abstract Synchronous online learning via technology has become a major trend in institutions of higher education, allowing students to learn from video lectures alongside their peers online. However, relatively little research has focused on the influence of these peers on students’ learning during video lectures and even less on the effect of peer familiarity. The present study aimed to test the various effects of peer presence and peer familiarity on learning from video lectures. There were three experimental conditions: individual-learning, paired-learning with an unfamiliar peer, and paired-learning with a familiar peer. ANCOVA results found that students paired with a familiar peer reported higher motivation in learning and more self-monitoring behaviors than those paired with an unfamiliar peer or who learned alone. Furthermore, students paired with both unfamiliar or familiar peers demonstrated better learning transfer than those who learned alone. Together, these results confirm the benefits of and support learning alongside a familiar peer during video lectures

Is self-explanation better than explaining to a fictitious student when learning from video lectures?

Generating written explanations is a popular learning strategy in an online learning environment. Students can explain to themselves (ie, self-explanations) or a peer-student (ie, instructional explanations). However, for improving learning from video lectures, it is unclear whether writing self-explanations is more beneficial than writing instructional explanations, and whether writing both types of explanation is more beneficial than writing only one type. We compared the learning-related outcomes of students who wrote explanations under one of four conditions: self-explanation (n = 30), instructional explanation (n = 30), self-explanation then instructional explanation (n = 30) and instructional explanation then self-explanation (n = 30). We assessed the participants' external and internal attention, explanation quality, and immediate and delayed learning performance. Students in the conditions that included self-explanations showed higher internal attention, as well as better immediate and delayed performance than those in the instructional explanations condition. In addition, students in the two combined conditions showed a higher level of organization and elaboration than those in the instructional explanations condition. These results suggest that students should write explanations to themselves while learning from video lectures. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Generating explanations is a beneficial learning strategy. It is unclear whether explaining to oneself (self-explanations) is more beneficial than explaining to a peer (instructional explanations). The benefits of writing instructional explanations on learning performance were not consistently found across diverse areas. What this paper adds Self-explanations, both in oral and written form, were more effective for learning performance than instructional explanations. Students in the conditions that included both self-explanations and instructional explanations demonstrated a higher level of organization and elaboration than those in the instructional explanation condition. When compared to the self-explanations condition, additional instructional explanations had no effect on learning performance or internal attention. Implications for practice and/or policy Self-explanations was an excellent approach for learning from video lectures. Students should write explanations to themselves while learning from video lectures.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant [62007023, 61877024]; Research Projects of Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China under Grant [19XJC880006]; and the Research Projects of Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Shaanxi Province under Grant [2020P021]