Wylie, R., & Chi, M. T. H. (2014). The Self-Explanation Principle in Multimedia Learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (2nd ed., pp. 413–432)

A review of Self-explanation findings in the context of multimedia learning.

For me, the particularly interesting part was an extended discussion of different forms of self-explanation. Chi’s early papers (e.g. Chi, M. T. H., Bassok, M., Lewis, M. W., Reimann, P., & Glaser, R. (1989). Self-explanations: How students study and use examples in learning to solve problems. Cognitive Science, 13(2), 145–182) promote open-ended self-explanation. All the way on the other end of the spectrum, there have been experiments which involve choosing an explanation (or components of an explanation) from menus of options. But there are some interesting middle options:

{focused} self-explanation prompts: {asking for an open-ended self-explanation, but with language focusing it on some specific aspect}

{scaffolded} self-explanation prompts: {providing partially-complete prompts with Cloze deletion}

{resource-based} self-explanation prompts: {self-explanations are (or can be) constructed from an inventory of terms, phrases, etc}

In every experiment comparing different types of self-explanation prompt, open-ended ones perform worse than more structured alternatives:

Q. High-level finding regarding efficacy comparison of types of self-explanation prompt?
A. More structured self-explanation prompts consistently outperform open-ended prompts.

Q. Five types of self-explanation discussed?
A. open-ended, focused, scaffolded, resource-based, menu-based

Q. Which types of self-explanation are active (per ICAP)?
A. scaffolded, resource-based, menu-based

Q. Which types of self-explanation are constructive (per ICAP)?
A. open-ended, focused

Q. How to make self-explanation interactive interactive (per ICAP)?
A. small groups of students generating / critiquing constructive explanations