The Effects of Pretesting with Feedback on Students’ Learning Outcomes and SRL when Studying from Instructional Videos

Abstract

Providing students with a quiz before they study the material has been shown to foster learning. This effect has mainly been found in higher education and when the learning task concerned expository texts. The question remains whether this applies for secondary school students when learning from instructional videos. The current study explored the effects of pretesting, with or without feedback, on students’ learning. Additionally, effects of pretesting on students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) were investigated, as students often quit studying the material prematurely due to poor judgement of learning. Participants were divided into three conditions: control group (only watched the video), pretest group (answered questions before watching), and feedback group (answered questions with feedback before watching). Following the video, participants answered SRL questions and took a retention test. The study found that students in the feedback condition scored significantly higher on tested questions than students in control and pretest condition. For SRL, students in the pretest conditions yielded better regulation accuracy than students in the control condition. This study contributes to the pretesting literature, establishes a foundation for further research on improving students' SRL with pretesting and offers guidelines on how pretests can be implemented within an educational context.