Timing matters! Explaining between study phases enhances students’ learning.

Abstract

We would like to thank Eleonora Dolderer, Caroline Grau, and Anna Rosenträger for their assistance with many practical aspects during conducting the experiments. The research reported in this article was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (BMBF) under contract number 01JA1611.

Does increasing social presence enhance the effectiveness of writing explanations?

“…This process additionally triggers students to monitor whether they understood all relevant contents correctly or whether they need to restudy specific information. As a consequence, students' metacognitive monitoring may become more accurate when explaining, which has also been observed for other generative learning activities such as keyword generation or gap filling [3,4,35,36]. Learning by explaining is commonly implemented in interactive learning settings in which students explain learned contents to present and interactive peers; this setting allows students to exchange ideas and thought, which additionally enhances their understanding [6,7,31,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47].…”

“…Learning by explaining is commonly implemented in interactive learning settings in which students explain learned contents to present and interactive peers; this setting allows students to exchange ideas and thought, which additionally enhances their understanding [6,7,31,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Interestingly, recent research started to investigate the effectiveness of explaining to a fictitious peer and reported promising results [1,2,4,12,13,23]. For instance, Fiorella and Mayer [1] conducted an experiment in which university students first studied a text with the expectation to either answer a test (test expectancy) or to explain the content to a fictitious peer (explaining expectancy) after a learning phase.…”

“…Furthermore, several studies indicated that generating explanations additionally supports students' monitoring accuracy, which is a crucial metacognitive facet of successful learning [3,4]. For instance, during reorganizing and connecting learned contents for generating an explanation, students might detect unsolved problems, misunderstandings, or missing information that prevent them from understanding the contents deeply [27].…”

“…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]. Seminal studies on learning by explaining started to investigate the role of explaining in interactive settings, such as during collaborative learning or tutoring, in which the explainer received feedback from the recipient, for instance, in form of direct questions [6,8].…”

Fostering knowledge building in learning by teaching: A test of the drawing‐facilitates‐explaining hypothesis

“…The few tutors who spontaneously engaged in knowledge building, in which they elaborated on the material using their existing knowledge, demonstrated better conceptual understanding. Moreover, the tendency to self‐monitor one's understanding during teaching was positively related to greater knowledge building, suggesting self‐monitoring may be a catalyst for knowledge building in learning by teaching (Lachner et al, 2020; Okita & Schwartz, 2013; Roscoe & Chi, 2007).…”