Self-study in higher education: Its role in productive discussions and learning outcomes

Although discussion is widely used as an effective instructional strategy in the classroom, the questions remain about which additional strategies can be combined to discussion. The present study aims to examine the role of self-study as an individual preparation for discussion and the learning effect of the combination of self-study and discussion. We compared a two-sequential design of groups: individual preparation (video lecture vs. self-study) and type of discussion (teacher-facilitated vs. student-led). We compared the test scores for shallow learning and transfer of learning. Conducting two experiments (n1 = 91; n2 = 113, respectively), we found that the self-study group obtained higher scores than those of the video lecture group regardless of discussion type. Specifically, the self-study group obtained higher scores through student-led discussions, while lecture groups improved scores through teacher-facilitated discussion. To interpret the results, we analyzed the content of discussions. The result demonstrated that students in the self-study group conducted more constructive interactions with students than they did with teachers, while the video lecture group interacted more with teachers than they did with students. The findings indicate that self-study as individual preparation improves the learning effect of discussion.