Examining Mind Wandering and Student Learning Behaviors while Engaging with Online Video Learning

Teaching students through videos is a common mode of instruction in higher education. When students use videos to learn, they are required to demonstrate self-regulated learning to succeed. It is common for students to face external and internal distractions, such as thoughts unrelated to the task (mind wandering). While mind wandering, students focus on an internal stream of thought and not on the presented content. Previous research has shown that mind wandering occurs about 30% of the time while learning and negatively impacts learning outcomes. Studies aimed at reducing mind wandering often restricted a student’s ability to rewind videos after realising they were mind wandering. In this study, we explored how students manage their mind wandering when learning from videos in a natural setting. We observed whether students rewound videos after becoming aware of mind wandering, used as an indicator of self-regulated learning behaviour. Across eight courses at an Australian university, 53 students watched lecture videos using a custom video player that allowed self-reporting of mind-wandering episodes and tracked video interactions. Results showed that students reported mind wandering on average once every 10 minutes, but rewound after fewer than 5% of reports.

11/2024