The role of scaffolding in improving information seeking in videos.

Information seeking (IS) has become a critical activity in video‐based environments. Up to now, the effects of support on information seeking (i.e., scaffolding) have seldom been assessed. The twofold aim of the current study was to (a) assess the effects of scaffolding on IS in videos and (b) determine the characteristics of the users' mental models after an IS activity with or without scaffolding. We divided 50 participants into two groups that either did or did not benefit from initial scaffolding during an IS task. Both groups then had to perform a localization task without any further access to scaffolding. Results showed that scaffolding the video by providing a table of contents and markers on a timeline helped students to engage in highly efficient IS, but they had less accurate mental representations of the video than those without scaffolding. The hypothesis that scaffolding provides a usable but external model was therefore supported. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Videos are increasingly used in learning.Searching for information in videos may be a complex activity.So far, very few studies have been conducted on the potential effect of scaffolding videos during an information‐seeking (IS) task. What this paper adds: In this study, we put in place the scaffolding of the video by adding a table of contents and markers on the timeline.Structuration and segmentation have positive effects on the performance in IS, in terms of response success, time spent on each search, relevance, and perceived difficulty.Scaffolding has a negative impact on the users' internal representations of the video. Implications for practice: Incorporating a table of contents and a structured timeline into a video facilitates the search activity.Without scaffolding, the search activity is longer and cognitively more costly.Paradoxically, users have a poorer representation of the video (i.e., poorer mental model) after the IS task when they were given scaffolding.Future studies should focus on the benefits of providing structuring and segmentation in learning tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]