Learning with video-based examples - Are you sure you do not need help?

This study investigated help-seeking activities in a computer-based environment teaching argumentative skills by videos of argumentative dialogues of teachers who discussed controversy issues in the context of a workshop. Learners, all of them students of educational sciences, solved learning tasks on the presented argumentative dialogues and reflected on their response certitude. Forty-three students voluntary took part in the study. Two experimental groups varied according to the type of task they solved. Group 1 got adjunct questions, so-called self-explanation prompts that elicited elaboration of the video content. Group 2 answered multiple-choice tasks that assessed the same knowledge. After each task, participants of both groups a had to judge the certainty of their response being correct i.e., the marking of the multiple-choice task or the written self-explanations and b were offered to use the help function on demand. Results revealed the relevance of learners' response certitude with respect to their help use. Low response certitude about the correctness of a task solution led to higher help use which was positively related to learning outcome. However, learners' response certitude was unrelated to the actual correctness of their task solution. Type of task had no influence on response certitude, help use or learning outcome.

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