Learning by explaining after pauses in video lectures: Are provided visuals a scaffold or a crutch?

Abstract

Explaining after pauses in a video lecture can be an effective learning activity, yet students need support to generate comprehensive explanations. This study tested whether providing students access to the visualizations from the video enhances explanation comprehensiveness and transfer performance. Undergraduates (n = 112) watched a 5-part lesson on the human kidney consisting of explanations and drawings. After each part, students typed an explanation without access to information from the video (explain group) or with access to the visualizations from the video (explain-visuals group), or they studied the visualizations and transcript from the video (restudy group). Students who explained significantly outperformed the restudy group on the transfer test (d =.47). The explain-visuals group generated significantly more comprehensive explanations during learning than the explain group (d =.54), but this did not result in significantly better performance on the subsequent transfer test (d =.09), suggesting the visuals may have served as a crutch more than a scaffold.