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The Role of Cognitive Abilities and Time Spent on Texts and Videos in a Multimodal Searching as Learning Task

The present paper reports on a Searching as Learning (SAL) study, with 115 university students learning about the formation of thunderstorms and lightning by searching the web. Participants' knowledge on the topic was measured before (t1) and after the learning phase (t2) with a free essay task. During the web search, the time participants spent on different information resources was measured, differentiating between text-dominated websites and videos. Furthermore, to examine the role of learners' cognitive abilities, their working memory capacity (WMC) and reading comprehension ability (RCA) were assessed. Results of a hierarchical linear regression analysis showed that after controlling for prior knowledge, WMC and RCA positively predicted students' learning outcome, as measured by the number of correct concepts included in essays composed after search. Moreover, the time spent on text-dominated websites was also associated with better learning outcomes. In contrast, the time spent watching videos was not beneficial. To conclude, our findings provide preliminary evidence that the time leaners spend on text-dominated websites and on videos might not contribute equally to the acquisition of conceptual knowledge in SAL tasks.