The previous section tells a nice story, but is there any evidence that segmenting
helps people learn better? The answer is yes. Mayer and Chandler (2001)
carried out the study using the lightning lesson as described in the previous
section. They found that learners who received the segmented presentation performed
better on transfer tests than the learners who received a continuous presentation,
even though identical material was presented in both conditions. In
a similar study, prospective teachers who viewed a continuous twenty- minute
video that demonstrated various exemplary teaching techniques performed
worse on a transfer test than did students who received the identical video broken
into seven segments, each focusing on one technique (Moreno, 2007).
Evidence for Breaking a Continuous Lesson
into Bite-Size Segments