Where You Are, Not What You See: The Impact of Learning Environment on Mind Wandering and Material Retention

Online lectures are an increasingly popular tool for learning, yet research on instructor visibility during an online lecture, and students' environmental settings, has not been well-explored. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by experimentally manipulating online display format and social learning settings to understand their influence on student learning and mind-wandering experiences. Results suggest that instructor visibility within an online lecture does not impact students' MW or retention performance. However, we found some evidence that students' social setting during viewing has an impact on MW (p = .05). Specifically, students who watched the lecture in a classroom with others reported significantly more MW than students who watched the lecture alone. Finally, social setting also moderated the negative relationship between MW and material retention. Our results demonstrate that learning experiences during online lectures can vary based on where, and with whom, the lectures are watched.