Abstract
Writing explanations has demonstrated to be less effective than providing oral explanations, as writing triggers less amounts of perceived social presence during explaining. In this study, we investigated whether increasing social presence during writing explanations would aid learning. University students (N = 137) read an instructional text about immunology; their subsequent task depended on experimental condition. Students either explained the contents to a fictitious peer orally, wrote their explanations in a text editor, or wrote them in a messenger chat, which was assumed to induce higher levels of social presence. A control group retrieved the material. Surprisingly, we did not obtain any differences in learning outcomes between experimental conditions. Interestingly, explaining was more effortful, enjoyable, and interesting than retrieving. This study shows that solely inducing social presence does not improve learning from writing explanations. More importantly, the findings underscore the importance of cognitive and motivational conditions during learning activities.
Highlights
Generating explanations is regarded as a successful strategy to enhance students’ understanding, as it triggers generative processes associated with deep learning [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Recent research replicated the beneficial of explaining in non-interactive settings, in which no recipient was present; students explained learned material to a fictitious peer which resulted in higher learning outcomes [1,9,10]
As previous studies highlighted the role of social presence, we investigated whether inducing social presence would increase the effectiveness of writing explanations regarding students’ comprehension
Summary
Generating explanations is regarded as a successful strategy to enhance students’ understanding, as it triggers generative processes associated with deep learning [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Recent research replicated the beneficial of explaining in non-interactive settings, in which no recipient was present; students explained learned material to a fictitious peer which resulted in higher learning outcomes [1,9,10]. A possible reason for the benefit of oral explaining might be the difference between perceived social presence during explaining. In this context, Jacob, Lachner, and Scheiter [13] provided first evidence that writing explanations induces lower levels of social presence during explaining than providing oral explanations, and reduces the quality of the generated explanations [11,12,13].
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