How repeated studying and testing affects multimedia learning: Evidence for adaptation to task demands

Two biases can occur in multimedia learning: overconfidence and over-reliance on text processing. The present research sought to identify these biases and to investigate whether they can be reduced, and hence learning fostered, when studying and testing are repeated. In 2 experiments (Exp.1: N = 79, Exp.2: N = 52), students learned either with text only or with text and pictures (multimedia) about how the toilet flush works, gave judgments-of-learning (JOLs), were tested on the learning contents; afterwards this study-test cycle was repeated. Results from both experiments revealed stronger overconfidence due to multimedia in both study-test cycles (JOLs higher than learning outcomes). Eye movement data showed a relative increase in attention on the picture versus text from cycle 1 to cycle 2; this relative increase in attention was related to better learning outcomes. Repeated studying and testing thus helped to reduce over-reliance on text processing in multimedia learning, fostering performance.     

Early Second Language Learning through SparkLing™: Scaling up a Language Intervention in Infant Education Centers

Infancy (0–3 years) represents a unique time for language learning. Previous research shows that infants' second language (L2) learning advances rapidly in early education centers, through a research‐based method and curriculum delivered by native‐speaking language tutors. Here we test the potential of this method for broad application, through an interactive online tool, SparkLing?, which trains and certifies language tutors to implement the program in infant education centers. Intervention infants (n = 168) from families of predominantly low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds in Madrid, Spain, experienced 18 or 36 weeks of L2 (English) exposure, through daily, 45‐min, group sessions led by SparkLing?‐trained tutors and were compared to a matched Current Practice Comparison (CPC) group of peers (n = 72). Intervention children outperformed the CPC group and showed rapid gains in English comprehension and production. SES was not a significant factor in learning. Infants' L2 skills advance quickly using this research‐to‐practice, scalable program for play‐based infant L2 instruction.     

Depressive Symptoms in Third‐Grade Teachers: Relations to Classroom Quality and Student Achievement

This study investigated associations among third‐grade teachers' (N = 27) symptoms of depression, quality of the classroom‐learning environment (CLE), and students' (N = 523, M_age = 8.6 years) math and literacy performance. teachers' depressive symptoms in the winter negatively predicted students' spring mathematics achievement. This depended on students' fall mathematics scores; students who began the year with weaker math skills and were in classrooms where teachers reported more depressive symptoms achieved smaller gains than did peers whose teachers reported fewer symptoms. teachers' depressive symptoms were negatively associated with quality of CLE, and quality of CLE mediated the association between depressive symptoms and student achievement. The findings point to the importance of teachers' mental health, with implications for policy and practice.     

Drawing pictures during learning from scientific text: testing the generative drawing effect and the prognostic drawing effect

Does using a learner-generated drawing strategy (i.e., drawing pictures during reading) foster students' engagement in generative learning during reading? In two experiments, 8th-grade students (Exp. 1: N = 48; Exp. 2: N = 164) read a scientific text explaining the biological process of influenza and then took two learning outcome tests. In Experiment 1, students who were asked to draw pictures during reading (learner-generated drawing group), scored higher than students who only read (control group) on a multiple-choice comprehension test (d = 0.85) and on a drawing test (d = 1.15). In Experiment 2, students in the learner-generated drawing group scored significantly higher than the control group on both a multiple-choice comprehension test (d = 0.52) and on a drawing test (d = 1.89), but students who received author-generated pictures in addition to drawing or author-generated pictures only did not. Additionally, the drawing-accuracy scores during reading correlated with comprehension test scores (r = .623, r = .470) and drawing scores (r = .620, r = .615) in each experiment, respectively. These results provide further evidence for the generative drawing effect and the prognostic drawing effect, thereby confirming the benefits of the learner-generated drawing strategy.     

Instructional animation versus static pictures: A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis of 26 primary studies, yielding 76 pair-wise comparisons of dynamic and static visualizations, reveals a medium-sized overall advantage of instructional animations over static pictures. The mean weighted effect size on learning outcome is d = 0.37 (95% CI 0.25–0.49). Moderator analyses indicate even more substantial effect sizes when the animation is representational rather than decorational (d = 0.40, 95% CI 0.26–0.53), when the animation is highly realistic, e.g., video-based (d = 0.76, 95% CI 0.39–1.13), and/or when procedural-motor knowledge is to be acquired (d = 1.06, 95% CI 0.72–1.40). The results are in line with contemporary theories of cognitive load and multimedia learning, and they have practical implications for instructional design.     

Examining the Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Success of an Embodied Learning Activity in the Study of Hand Anatomy for Clinical Application

A student's own body provides an often disregarded site of knowledge production and corporeal wisdom. Learning via cognitive processes anchored in physical movement and body awareness, known as embodied learning, may aid students to visualize structures and understand their functions and clinical relevance. Working from an embodied learning perspective, the current article evaluates the use of an offline physical learning tool (Anatomical Glove Learning System; AGLS) for teaching hand anatomy for clinical application in medical students. Two student samples (N₁ = 105; N₂ = 94) used the AGLS in two different ways. In the first sample, the AGLS was compared to a traditional approach using hand bones, models and prosected specimens. Secondly, the AGLS and traditional approach were combined. The evaluation consisted of three outcomes: short-term learning (post-test), medium-term applications (mock-objective structured clinical examination, MOSCE), and longer-term assessment (objective structured clinical examination, OSCE). Findings from the first sample indicated no significant differences between the AGLS and traditional laboratory groups on short- (F_(1,78) = 0.036, P = 0.849), medium- (F_(1,50) = 0.743, P = 0.393), or longer-term (F_(1,82) = 0.997, P = 0.321) outcomes. In the second sample using the AGLS in combination with a traditional approach was associated with significantly better short-term post-test scores (F_(2,174) = 5.98, P = 0.003) than using the AGLS alone, but demonstrated no effect for long-term OSCE scores. These results suggest an embodied learning experience alone does not appear to be advantageous to student learning, but when combined with other methods for studying anatomy there are learning gains.     

The link between student-perceived teacher talk and student enjoyment,anxiety and discursive engagement in the classroom

This study seeks to understand the emotional connection of teachers' academically productive talk (APT) with student learning from the students' perspective. Using a sample of 2,225 students (N_{7th grade} = 1,146 and N_{8th grade} = 1,079) from 16 middle schools in a city of China, we investigate the relationship between students' perceptions of their teachers’ APT, student emotions (enjoyment and anxiety) and their discursive engagement with others in the mathematics classroom. Results from structural equation modelling and mediation analysis show that after controlling for gender, family resources and mathematics achievement, student-perceived teacher APT was positively associated with their discursive engagement with classmates. Furthermore, student enjoyment and anxiety in class mediated the relationship between student-perceived teacher APT and student discursive engagement with classmates. Multi-group analysis revealed that the model was invariant across genders and grades, indicating that the associations were applicable to male and female students as well as to seventh and eighth graders. These findings shed light on the emotional relationship of teacher APT with the discursive engagement of their students. Although prior research observes a positive relationship between teacher productive classroom talk and student discursive engagement primarily through classroom observations and teacher reflections, this study provides evidence from the students’ perspective and highlights the mediating role of student emotions in the relationship.     

EFL teachers' behavior of using motivational strategies: The case of teaching in the Korean context

While studies have investigated the role of motivation in learning and teaching, research on teachers' motivational strategies remains scarce. This study examined the motivating behavior of in-service teachers of English in Korea (N = 12). Videotapes of the teachers' classes were analyzed based on Keller's ARCS model using NVivo, revealing that the teachers did not effectively utilize motivational strategies or tactics, except for attention. Additionally, teachers' motivational strategies were correlated positively with their language proficiency but negatively with teaching experience. Finally, teachers' motivational strategies were shown to be grounded in traditional teacher-centered approaches rather than the promotion of student ownership of learning.     

Students’ perceptions of Plickers and crossword puzzles in undergraduate studies

In higher education, there are calls to incorporate active learning experiences that place the student at the center of learning, rather than encouraging students to be passive listeners. For students to have a deeper and more meaningful learning experience, educators can use an active learning approach. This approach attempts to engage students at higher levels of thinking so that they are more interested in, better engaged with, and understand the course material better. The aim of this study was to investigate students’ perceptions of Plickers and crossword puzzles as low‐cost pedagogical tools to foster active learning in an undergraduate course in food science and technology. A mixed‐method survey consisting of a 5‐point Likert scale and open‐ended qualitative questions was administered via Blackboard to elicit student responses. A total of 121 students were enrolled for the course and 70.2% (n = 85) completed the survey. Plickers were found to be easy to use (mean = 4.66), provided opportunities to answer to formative questions anonymously (mean = 4.60), and helped increase participation in class (mean 4.05). The majority of students felt that crossword puzzles required them to think critically (mean = 4.53) and provided them with the opportunity to assess how well they understood the course content (mean = 4.45). Moreover, a statistically positive relationship was found between student collaborative learning and crossword puzzle implementation scores (r = .506, p < .01). The findings demonstrated that when implemented effectively, Plickers and crossword puzzles contributed to greater enhanced student engagement. These pedagogical tools can be applied as formative assessment instruments and offer a low‐cost alternative to the limitations encapsulated by didactic pedagogy.     

Self-fulfilling prophecies in media-based learning: Content relevance moderates quality expectation effects on academic achievement

In the present paper a model of self-fulfilling prophecy effects in media-based learning was developed and tested. The central model assumption was that information about an instructional medium's quality affects students' academic achievement depending on the instructional content's relevance to the student. Experiment 1 (N = 100) demonstrated higher achievement in response to positive compared to negative information, but not the predicted moderating effect of content relevance. Using a revised relevance manipulation, Experiment 2 (N = 199) identified the following moderating function of content relevance: Under moderate relevance positive information led to higher achievement, under high relevance negative information resulted in higher achievement. No differences appeared under low relevance. Path analyses revealed students' cognitive effort as significant mediator for these effects.     

Enhancing Anatomical Instruction: Impact of a Virtual Canine Anatomy Program on Student Outcomes

Innovative reforms in medical education will require instructional tools to support these changes and to give students more flexibility in where and how they learn. At Colorado State University, the software program Virtual Canine Anatomy (VCA) was developed to assist student learning both inside and outside the anatomical laboratory. The program includes interactive anatomical photographs of dissected canine cadavers, dissection instructions with accompanying videos and diagrams, radiographs, and three-dimensional models. There is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional tools like VCA so that decisions on pedagogical delivery can be evidence-based. To measure the impact of VCA on student outcomes in a dissection laboratory, this study compared student attitudes, quiz scores, dissection quality and accuracy, and instructor reliance between students with and without access to VCA. Students with VCA needed less time with teaching assistants (P < 0.01), asked teaching assistants fewer questions (P = 0.04), felt that the dissection was easier (P = 0.02), and were in stronger agreement that they had access to adequate resources (P = 0.02). No differences were found in the dissection quality or accuracy, quiz scores, or attitudes regarding overall enjoyment of the activity between the two groups. This study shows that VCA increases student independence and can be used to enhance anatomical instruction.     

Where Culture Takes Hold: “Overimitation” and Its Flexible Deployment in Western,Aboriginal, and Bushmen Children

Children often “overimitate,” comprehensively copying others' actions despite manifest perceptual cues to their causal ineffectuality. The inflexibility of this behavior renders its adaptive significance difficult to apprehend. This study explored the boundaries of overimitation in 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children of three distinct cultures: Westernized, urban Australians (N = 64 in Experiment 1; N = 19 in Experiment 2) and remote communities of South African Bushmen (N = 64) and Australian Aborigines (N = 19). Children overimitated at high frequency in all communities and generalized what they had learned about techniques and object affordances from one object to another. Overimitation thus provides a powerful means of acquiring and flexibly deploying cultural knowledge. The potency of such social learning was also documented compared to opportunities for exploration and practice.     

Seeing Iconic Gesture Promotes First- and Second-Order Verb Generalization in Preschoolers

This study investigated whether seeing iconic gestures depicting verb referents promotes two types of generalization. We taught 3- to 4-year-olds novel locomotion verbs. Children who saw iconic manner gestures during training generalized more verbs to novel events (first-order generalization) than children who saw interactive gestures (Experiment 1, N = 48; Experiment 2, N = 48) and path-tracing gestures (Experiment 3, N = 48). Furthermore, immediately (Experiments 1 and 3) and after 1 week (Experiment 2), the iconic manner gesture group outperformed the control groups in subsequent generalization trials with different novel verbs (second-order generalization), although all groups saw interactive gestures. Thus, seeing iconic gestures that depict verb referents helps children (a) generalize individual verb meanings to novel events and (b) learn more verbs from the same subcategory.     

Translating Laboratory Evidence into Classroom Practice with Teacher‐Led Randomized Controlled Trials—A Perspective and Meta‐Analysis

We initiated and structured a single program that supervised teachers, some with neuroscience or psychology degrees, to collaborate and explore the effects of science of learning‐translated pedagogy. This article reports on the 34 findings from teacher‐led randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and replications. Teachers designed trials, looking at areas such as attention, memory, and spaced learning. Overall, positive effects were found over short periods (1–6 weeks; r = 0.15, p < .0001 [d = 0.30], N = 2,157). However, retrieval practice (testing as a learning experience) had differential effects mediated by age, approach, and lesson content. Results suggest science of learning‐translated pedagogy needs extensive replication to establish how best to use laboratory evidence in classrooms. Multiple planned replication of teacher‐led RCTs has potential as an evaluation tool, combining high levels of mundane realism with strong internal validity and the potential to build cost effective large samples for meta‐analysis.     

Testing the model-observer similarity hypothesis with text-based worked examples

Example-based learning is a very effective and efficient instructional strategy for novices. It can be implemented using text-based worked examples that provide a written demonstration of how to perform a task, or (video) modelling examples in which an instructor (the ‘model’) provides a demonstration. The model-observer similarity (MOS) hypothesis predicts that the effectiveness of modelling examples partly depends on the degree to which learners perceive the models to be similar to them. It is an open question, however, whether perceived similarity with the person who created the example, would also affect learning from text-based worked examples. Therefore, two experiments were conducted to investigate whether MOS would also play a role in learning from worked examples. In Experiment 1 (N = 147), students were led to believe via pictures and a short story that the worked examples were created by a male or female peer student. Males showed higher performance and confidence, but no effects of MOS on learning were found. In Experiment 2 (N = 130), students were led to believe that a peer student or a teacher created the examples. Again, no effects of MOS were found. These findings suggest that the perceived origin of text-based worked examples is not important for learning.     

Teachers’ judgment accuracy concerning consistent and inconsistent student profiles

Research on teachers' judgment accuracy has focused on teacher judgments of single student characteristics. We analyzed differences in teachers' judgment accuracy concerning students with consistent and inconsistent cognitive and socio-emotional profiles (i.e., profiles of cognitive abilities, self-concept, motivation, and anxiety). Based on test scores and self-reports of N = 743 students, we identified one inconsistent and two consistent profiles. Judgments of N = 43 teachers yielded only three consistent student profiles, indicating that teachers perceived student profiles to be more consistent than they really were. Contrary to our expectations, teachers' judgments were not more accurate for consistent student profiles.     

More accurate than assumed: Learners’ metacognitive beliefs about the effectiveness of retrieval practice

We doubt the prevailing interpretation of lower Judgments of Learning (JOLs) for testing over rereading to reflect learners' favoritism of an ineffective activity. We argue that JOLs for testing are biased due to a negative feedback effect. In three preregistered experiments (N_final = 306), we eliminated the feedback effect by asking students to only imagine learning with the described activities (rereading/testing) after reading a text and by capturing offline-JOLs (off-JOLs = being decoupled from the current learning experience) as a function of an imaginary final test delay (5 min/1 week/2 weeks). In 5-min conditions, off-JOLs consistently reflected no differences between rereading and testing; in 1-week and 2-week conditions, two (of three) experiments demonstrated an advantage of testing over rereading. These results are consistent with actual learning outcomes in an experiment using the same text and activities (Rummer et al., 2017, Exp. 1). Learners’ metacognitive judgments resembled actual learning outcomes more accurately than suggested by previous research.     

Prerequisite knowledge and time of testing in learning with animations and static pictures: Evidence for the expertise reversal effect

An animation can have an informational advantage over a static picture by depicting dynamic features. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the provision of prerequisite knowledge can help learners infer dynamic features from a static picture. It was assumed that this supposedly more active processing with a static picture would result in longer lasting knowledge representations. A 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects design with visualization format (static picture vs. animation), prerequisite knowledge (provided vs. not provided), and time of testing (immediate vs. one week later) was used (N = 260). The results of a transfer test showed that learners with low prerequisite knowledge benefited from the animation, but this was not the case for learners with high prerequisite knowledge. Time of testing had no influence. In line with the expertise reversal effect, prerequisite knowledge not only fostered learning with the static picture but also hindered learning with the animation.     

Red to Green or Fast to Slow? Infants' Visual Working Memory for “Just Salient Differences”

In this study, 6‐month‐old infants' visual working memory for a static feature (color) and a dynamic feature (rotational motion) was compared. Comparing infants' use of different features can only be done properly if experimental manipulations to those features are equally salient (Kaldy & Blaser, 2009; Kaldy, Blaser, & Leslie, 2006). The interdimensional salience mapping method was used to find two objects that each were one Just Salient Difference from a common baseline object (N = 16). These calibrated stimuli were then used in a subsequent two‐alternative forced‐choice preferential looking memory test (N = 28). Results showed that infants noted the color change, but not the equally salient change in rotation speed.