Teaching the contents of study materials by providing explanations to fellow students can be a beneficial instructional activity. A learning-by-teaching effect can also occur when students provide explanations to a real, remote, or even fictitious audience that cannot be interacted with. It is unclear, however, which underlying mechanisms drive…

Worked examples support learning. However, if they introduce easy-to-confuse concepts or principles, specific ways of providing worked examples may influence their effectiveness. Multiple worked examples can be introduced blocked (i.e., several for the same principle) or interleaved (i.e., switching between principles), and can be sequentially or…

Multiple studies have revealed the beneficial effects of emotional design on affective or motivational factors but not often on learning outcomes. We, therefore, tested one important boundary condition: the duration of the learning episode. For the implementation of emotional design, we used the video format of sketched explanation videos, which…

To achieve deeper understanding when learning from multiple representations, learners should actively select, organize and integrate the relevant information from text and graphics within a coherent mental representation. However, as learners often fail to select and integrate all relevant information, especially from graphics, they need specific…

This article discusses the relevance of the worked-example effect for mathematics education. This effect refers to the finding that, in initial cognitive skill acquisition, students profit more from studying worked examples as compared to solving problems. One reason for the effectiveness of worked examples is that the students get the opportunity…

Visual displays are very frequently used in learning materials. Although visual displays have great potential to foster learning, they also pose substantial demands on learners so that the actual learning outcomes are often disappointing. In this article, we pursue three main goals. First, we identify the main difficulties that learners have when…

We propose the self-regulation view in writing-to-learn as a promising theoretical perspective that draws on models of self-regulated learning theory and cognitive load theory. According to this theoretical perspective, writing has the potential to scaffold self-regulated learning due to the cognitive offloading written text generally offers as an…

Preservice teachers face the challenge of integrating multiple types of knowledge, such as pedagogical-psychological knowledge and subject-specific pedagogical knowledge. We investigated whether prior instruction emphasizing the importance of knowledge integration (relevance instruction) supports preservice teachers in using both knowledge types…

Recent findings show that after studying a text, teaching the learned content on video to a fictitious peer student improves learning more than restudying the content. This benefit may be in part due to increased arousal associated with the teaching activity. The present experiment investigated whether teaching on video is also effective for…

Previous research has shown that explaining is an effective activity to enhance learning. In prior studies, students were instructed to explain the contents after completing an entire learning phase. Explaining at the end of a learning phase, however, may be less apt to support comprehension monitoring and subsequent regulation activities. In 2…

Example-based learning often uses a design in which learners first receive basic instructional explanations of new principles and concepts and then examples thereof. In this sequence, it is crucial that learners self-explain by using the content of the basic instructional explanations to elaborate on the examples. Typically, learners are not…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the efficacy of using faded worked examples presented in matrices with problem structure variability to enhance learners' ability to recognize the underlying structure of the problems. Specifically, this study compared the effects of matrix-format versus linear-format faded worked examples combined with…

A rising number of (online) learning scenarios feature video-based worked examples. We analyzed the effects of the presentation mode of worked examples on their effectiveness and efficiency in two experiments with university students (N[subscript 1] = 57; N[subscript 2] = 43). The students acquired argumentation knowledge by self-explaining…

We investigated the effects of rapid assessment tasks and different adaptive restudy prompts in multimedia learning. The adaptivity was based on rapid assessment tasks that were interspersed throughout a multimedia learning environment. In Experiment 1 (N = 52 university students), we analyzed to which extent rapid assessment tasks were reactive…

Although instructional explanations are commonly used to introduce learners to new learning content, previous studies have often shown that their effects on learning outcomes are minimal. This failure might partly be due to mental passivity of the learners while processing introductory explanations and to a lack of opportunity to revise potential…