Captioning is a process of converting an audio portion of video production into text, which normally shown on a display screen. The use of video tutorial caption is one of the contributing factors for the success or failure of a video tutorial on learning performance. However, in the video tutorial for engineering machinery, it is still unclear how different type of captioning – full, partial, and no caption – may affect users’ learning performance. The objectives of the study are: (i) to evaluate the effect of full caption, partial caption, and no caption of machine’s video tutorial on users’ learning performance; (ii) to evaluate the effect of full caption, partial caption, and no caption of machine’s video tutorial based on particular part of the video – safety, equipment, procedure, and housekeeping – on users’ learning performance. Twenty-four participants were randomly assigned into three different groups, namely Full Caption, Partial Caption, and No Caption, and they were stimulated with four video tutorials (of four engineering machinery – that used the full caption, partial caption, and no caption respectively. 

After the video tutorial session, participants were assessed with quizzes that covered the content of the tutorials. In overall, participants performed the best when partial caption video was used (M = 38.25, SD = 2.96) than when the full caption video (M = 33.88, SD = 2.99) or no caption video (M = 28.5, SD = 4.99). The differences are significant different at p <0.001 [F (2, 21) = 13.4, p <0.001]. Comparing the performance by criteria (safety, equipment, procedure, and housekeeping), the results reveal that there are significant differences in all conditions except for safety criteria. In safety criteria; partial caption video (M = 7.38, SD = 1.06), full caption video (M = 7.00, SD = 0.93) and no caption video (M = 6.38, SD = 1.06) are not significant different [F (2, 21) = 1.971, p <0.0164]. This is due to the caption used, which included captions that were too short or contain only one word, thus make no different despite the type of captioning. The results from this study provide additional information regarding the use of partial caption in the video tutorial for engineering machinery, in which it improves the users’ learning performance.