Asking students questions before they learn something has been shown to enhance memory for that information. Studies demonstrating this prequestion effect in reading tasks have shown that such prequestions may not enhance-and could even impair-learning of information that was not prequestioned, possibly due to learners' tendencies to selectively process the prequestioned information at the expense of non-prequestioned information. The current study explored the effects of prequestions on learning from videos, where such a selective processing strategy would be less likely to occur. Participants viewed an educational video and either answered prequestions prior to viewing each of three segments (Prequestion Group), or they viewed the same video without answering prequestions (Control Group). A later test revealed a significant advantage for the Prequestion Group over the Control Group, and this pertained to both prequestioned and non-prequestioned information. Thus, prequestions appear to confer both specific and general benefits on video-based learning.

Prior research by Hartwig and Dunlosky [(2012). Study strategies of college students: Are self-testing and scheduling related to achievement? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(1), 126-134] has demonstrated that beliefs about learning and study strategies endorsed by students are related to academic achievement: higher performing students tend to choose more effective study strategies and are more aware of the benefits of self-testing. We examined whether students' achievement goals, independent of academic achievement, predicted beliefs about learning and endorsement of study strategies. We administered Hartwig and Dunlosky's survey, along with the Achievement Goals Questionnaire [Elliot, A. J., & McGregor, H. A. (2001). A 2 × 2 achievement goal framework. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 80, 501-519] to a large undergraduate biology course. Similar to results by Hartwig and Dunlosky, we found that high-performing students (relative to low-performing students) were more likely to endorse self-testing, less likely to cram, and more likely to plan a study schedule ahead of time. Independent of achievement, however, achievement goals were stronger predictors of certain study behaviours. In particular, avoidance goals (e.g., fear of failure) coincided with increased use of cramming and the tendency to be driven by impending deadlines. Results suggest that individual differences in student achievement, as well as the underlying reasons for achievement, are important predictors of students' approaches to studying.

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Students' judgments of learning (JOLs) are often driven by cues that are not diagnostic of actual learning. One powerful cue that can mislead JOLs is lecture fluency-the degree to which an instructor delivers a smooth, confident, and well-polished lecture. Lecture fluency often inflates JOLs, but has no effect on actual learning. The limited research so far, however, has not systematically explored the role of instructor experience, which may moderate the effects of lecture fluency. In two experiments, students viewed a video-recorded lecture of a fluent or disfluent lecture, and beforehand were informed that the instructor was experienced or inexperienced. Afterward, students made a JOL estimating how much they had learned, answered several evaluation questions, and took a test. Significant effects of lecture fluency, but not instructor experience, occurred whereby lecture fluency inflated JOLs but not test scores. As well, students more often based their JOLs on lecture fluency than instructor experience. The fluent lecture received more favorable evaluations than the disfluent lecture, including students' increased interest in the material and willingness to attend class, suggesting that fluent instruction might benefit learning in indirect ways that are not reflected in test scores. Public Significance StatementStudents' evaluations of their own learning can be misled by cues that are highly intuitive but unreliable. The fluency with which an instructor delivers a lecture (i.e., in a smooth and well-polished manner), but not the perceived experience of the instructor, coincides positively with students' impressions of the instructor and how much they feel they have learned, but does not reliably enhance learning, raising questions about the influence of certain instructor characteristics that have long been considered qualities of effective teaching.

Asking questions prior to learning enhances memory. Although this prequestion effect typically applies only to information that was prequestioned and not to other, non-prequestioned information, recent research using short videos found benefits to both prequestioned and non-prequestioned information. In the current study, students viewed authentic video-recorded lectures, each over 20 min, prepared for actual courses on signal detection theory (Experiment 1) and autobiographical memory (Experiment 2). Some students answered prequestions before viewing the videos (prequestion group) and some did not (control group). At final test the prequestion group outperformed the control group overall, as well as specifically for prequestioned information, but performance on non-prequestioned information was either not different from (Experiment 1) or only marginally better than (Experiment 2) the control group. The benefit of prequestions did not interact with subjective interest in the material. These results suggest positive but limited benefits of prequestions for educationally realistic lecture videos.