Learning-by-teaching is a pedagogical approach where learners teach the material they’ve studied to others. Wang and colleagues conducted an experiment with 96 college students from a university in central China comparing three versions of learning-by-teaching. Participants studied a 2-minute video on chemical synaptic transmission for 9 minutes and prepared a brief lesson of less than 5 minutes while randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) teach-to-camera – teach to an imaginary audience by creating a video lecture; (2) teach-to-student – teach to an audience face-to-face; (3) teach-to-group – teach to seven people physically present in the room. Audiences in the latter two conditions provided no feedback. Data collecting involved learning outcomes scores, self-reported questionnaires, pulse rate, and teaching process recordings. Results indicated that:
- Students in the teach-to-camera condition performed better than those in the other two conditions in terms of generative processing(more idea units, elaborations, and monitoring statements in their explanations).
- The teach-to-camera participants outperformed the teach-to-group students in the retention test and the transfer test, and scored better than those in the teach-to-student condition on the retention test.
- The teach-to-camera participants also reported significantly lower social presence and pulse rate than the two other groups, and perceived lower state anxiety, teaching difficulty, and cognitive load in teaching than those in the teach-to-group condition.
The authors suggested that the better performance observed in the teach-to-camera arm of learning-by-teaching might stem from the absence of a live audience. This absence reduced social presence, thereby minimizing extraneous processing (such as anxiety, cognitive load, and increased pulse rate) and enhancing generative processing.
