Watching Screencasts Help Students Learn APA Format Better Than Reading the Manual

Improving students’ knowledge and application of American Psychological Association (APA) formatting rules typically involves spending class time reviewing or practicing these rules. Screencasts (narrated lectures with real-time screen capture) can reduce the time professors devote to teaching APA format. In addition to imparting rules, screencasts illustrate how to implement rules in a digital environment. Across two experiments, we examined whether screencasts effectively taught students how to generally set up a paper and a title page in APA format. Compared to students who accessed the APA Manual, students who viewed screencasts demonstrated significantly greater gains in knowledge and corrected more errors in a digital environment. When technological demands were higher, students found the screencasts more informative, interesting, and useful than the APA Manual.