Researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of self-explanations (SE) as an instructional practice and study strategy. However, there is a lack of work studying the characteristics of SE responses prompted by collaborative activities. In this paper, we use writing analytics to investigate differences between SE text responses resulting from individual versus collaborative learning activities. A Coh-Metrix analysis suggests that students in the collaborative SE activity demonstrated a higher level of comprehension. Future research should explore how writing analytics can be incorporated into CSCL systems to support student performance of SE activities.

This paper explores how the use of smartphones vs. laptops influences students’ engagement, behaviour and experience watching academic videos in a collaborative classroom. Experiments were run in authentic teaching sessions with a total of 483 first-year higher education students. The methodology applied is a quasi-experimental design with post-test-only, being the independent variable, the device used to visualise the academic videos. Results indicate that the use of laptops has provided better results in terms of student’s engagement with the videos, their collaborative behaviour and satisfaction with the device. Hence, the findings of this research suggest that the type of mobile device used in activities that consider the use of videos in a collaborative class need to be carefully chosen to maximise the student’s comfortability – and in consequence, their engagement with the video-based learning activity and their positive behaviour and experience within the collaborative context.