Students with low prior knowledge learn more when explaining to a peer than to a teacher after viewing educational videos

Students are often encouraged to explain recently-taught information to others to enhance their learning in various settings including face-to-face in the classroom, through text, or in educational videos. However, nearly all studies on the impact of explaining things to others have focused on the effects of explaining to a less-knowledgeable peer, and have not considered the students’ own prior knowledge. The current study tested the interaction effects of students’ prior knowledge and the social identity of their audience on the students’ learning via explaining their new knowledge to others after viewing educational videos. We observed interaction effects on immediate learning performance, monitoring accuracy, and theta power while the students both watching videos and prepared to explain, but not on delayed learning performance or motivation. The current study highlights the fact that students with low prior knowledge learn more from an educational video when explaining the lesson to a peer than they do when explaining to a teacher after viewing. Our findings have implications on learning strategies which can be adopted when using educational videos in educational settings, specifically that students, especially those with low prior knowledge, should be encouraged to generate explanations of the lesson to share with their peers rather than with their teachers, as this will better enhance their working memory activity as they prepare to explain the educational videos.