How Learners Engage with In-Context Retrieval Exercises in Online Informational Videos

Learners increasingly refer to online videos for learning new technical concepts, but often overlook or forget key details. We investigated how retrieval practice, a learning strategy commonly used in education, could be designed to reinforce key concepts in online videos. We began with a formative study to understand users' perceptions of cued and free-recall retrieval techniques. We next designed a new in-context flashcard-based technique that provides expert-curated retrieval exercises in context of a video's playback. We evaluated this technique with 14 learners and investigated how learners engage with flashcards that are prompted automatically at predefined intervals or flashcards that appear on-demand. Our results overall showed that learners perceived automatically prompted flashcards to be less effortful and made the learners feel more confident about grasping key concepts in the video. However, learners found that on-demand flashcards gave them more control over their learning and allowed them to personalize their review of content. We discuss the implications of these findings for designing hybrid automatic and on-demand in-context retrieval exercises for online videos.