Abstract:

Software video tutorials are a powerful teaching tool for learning software applications. As educational tools, video tutorials provide instructions for performing tasks through software. From the standpoint of design principles, there are two general theoretical frameworks in the literature, the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and Demonstration Based Training. The practice design feature is used in the demonstration of procedures when the recipients are mainly novices. Practice is a method of learning skills by observing a model and its consequent application. This study investigates the effect of a special variant of practice on software training with video tutorials. At the same time, this research explores other mediators of learning such as mental effort, self-efficacy, flow, and motivation. One hundred fourteen undergraduate students of a Nursing Department in Central Greece participated in the study. A one-way ANOVA repeated measures design was used. During the intervention, the students watched three video tutorials that covered complex procedures of a Non-Linear Editor video editing software. Lastly, the participants implemented tasks in learning (declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and transfer knowledge). The results of the analysis reveal the contribution of practice on learning (d = 0.87). In addition, practice served as a catalyst in magnifying other constructs like self-efficacy (d = 0.71), flow (d = 0.92) and motivation (d = 0.83). In contrast to the original hypothesis, practice revealed no significant effect on mental effort.

Keywords:

Practice, software training, mental effort, self-efficacy, flow, motivation.