How does virtual peer presence relate to learning from video lectures and subsequent explanation generation? The moderated mediating roles of motivation and explanation characteristics

Finding effective ways to improve students’ learning from video lectures will not only improve online education efficacy, it will also play an important role in the digital transformation of education. Generating written explanations has shown some benefits for learning, and peer presence may be an implementation-related boundary condition. This study tested the impacts of virtual peer presence (presence vs. absence) and generative tasks (generating explanations vs. no generation) on students’ learning in a video-based learning context. Students’ attention, meta-comprehension accuracy, motivation, cognitive load, learning achievements, and explanation characteristics were measured. Results showed some benefits of having a virtual peer, and of generating written explanations on students’ learning. Moreover, mediating analyses revealed the mediating role of motivation between peer presence and learning achievement, and moderated mediating analyses revealed the moderating role of explanation characteristics between peer presence and motivation. Our findings not only extend the understanding of the positive effects of generating written explanations in video-based learning contexts, they also provide implications for improving students’ learning from video lectures as well as optimizing online video lectures.