The Effect of Practice Schedules on Learning from Instructional Videos

This study investigated the contribution of practice schedules’ ‘Blocked Practice (1) and Random Practice (2)’’ in learning from ‘Demonstration-Based Training’ videos for software training. For blocked practice, a video is viewed and then an associated task is immediately performed. In random practice, couple of videos are viewed first, after which tasks are done. Furthermore, self-efficacy and flow experience were measured for experimental reasons. Four measurement moments were used: training, posttest, delayed posttest and transfer-test. 89 participants (mean age = 13.1, education level = primary school (N=30), high school (N=69) participated in this study. Conclusion is that random practice schedules lead to better performance on a post test and a delayed posttest. No effect was found on training and transfer. Blocked practice leads to higher self-efficacy after training. For flow experience, blocked practice scored higher on training and random practice scored higher on the delayed-posttest. This study recommends a random practice schedule when learning from instructional videos.