The effect of prequestions on learning from video presentations

This paper examines what effect asking pupils questions before they learn something (prequestioning) has on enhancing their memory of that information. Drawing on studies that test this prequestion effect, the authors argue that this practice has previously been thought to impair learning, as pupils tended to focus on information they were previously questioned about at the expense of non-questioned information. They set out to test this belief.

Focusing particularly on the effects of prequestions when learning from videos, the authors found that when participants viewed an educational video and either answered prequestions prior to each viewing, or viewed the same video without answering prequestions, those who had prequestions retained a greater amount of information in general. This suggests that prequestions do appear to help video-based learning.