The effects of graphic organizer completeness and note-taking medium on computer-based learning

Education and Information Technologies - The purpose of this study was to determine how graphic organizer completeness (complete, partial, or no organizer) and note-taking medium (longhand or...     

Examining the effects of combining self-explanation principles with an educational game on learning science concepts

Educational researchers have indicated that although computer games have the potential to promote students’ motivation and engagement, the work on how to design effective games that fulfil educational purposes is still in its infancy. This study aimed to examine how integration of self-explanation into a computer game affected primary schoolers’ acquisition of light and shadow concepts. The participants were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group and played a computer game with or without self-explanation prompts individually as a treatment. Students’ conceptual understanding was evaluated through a pretest and a posttest administered right after the treatment. The results revealed that by controlling the pretest scores, students who played the game with self-explanation features did not outperform those who played the game without any prompts in the posttest. Further analyses of the experimental group students’ responses to the self-explanation prompts also indicated that the students with more correct responses to the prompts did not perform better than those with lower accuracy rates. The deficits in the use of self-explanation prompts are identified, and possible improvements to enhance the function of self-explanation in educational games are proposed.     

The effects of a combination of text structure awareness and graphic postorganizers on recall and retention of science knowledge

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a self-regulated strategy on immediate recall and retention of science knowledge in community-college anatomy and physiology students who participated in a 14-hour (8 weeks) study skills class. The class emphasized the recognition of five common science textbook text structures (cause and effect, classification, enumeration, generalization, and sequence) and the construction of graphic postorganizers of the text structures. A pretest, two immediate posttests, and a retention posttest were used to measure recall and retention. Results indicated that on immediate posttests students who actively constructed graphic postorganizers of the test structure recalled significantly more content than did the control students who simply underlined, reread, or highlighted. On a 3-week retention posttest, those students in the study skills class retained significantly more of the material studied than did the control group of students.     

The relationship of student interest and advance organizer effectiveness

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the relationship of learner interest and advance organizers with test performance. Student interest was measured before instruction and at several different times following instruction. The advance organizer, in a chart format, presented the key information upon which the instruction was based. Results indicated that the advance organizer had no positive effect on test performance in either study; however, student interest appeared to be affected by the presence of an advance organizer. Interest was a significant covariate. Specifically, the level of interest immediately following introduction of the material but prior to actual instruction changed when advance organizers were introduced. An “overjustification” hypothesis is discussed in relationship to these results.     

The effect of subsuming concepts on student achievement on unfamiliar science learning material

Students enrolled in an undergraduate chemistry class were rank ordered by their performance on a test of organizing ability. The median break was used to form two groups: good organizers (GO) and poor organizers (PO). Students within these groups were randomly assigned to treatments. Treatment I subjects received an advance organizer followed by a learning passage. Treatment II subjects received the same organizer preceeded by the learning passage. Treatment in subjects received an historical nonorganizer and the learning passage. No significant differences were observed on treatment or interaction, but GO group achieved significantly higher learning passage scores than PO group.     

The effect of knowledge of correct results per item on verbal learning and retention

A report of an experiment to measure the effects of both overt and covert responses to educational stimuli with KCR (knowledge of correct results) feedback provided. In most studies of feedback, KCR (or KR) is given as a consequence of an overt response: Stimulus-Response-Feedback. In the case of a covert response, the student constructs his answer but does not react overtly to the presentation of a stimulus item. Forty Ss were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups further divided into 1 control group receiving no feedback and 3 groups receiving information (KCR) according to either overt or covert response patterns. A 25-item multiple-choice test was administered 5 times by means of a terminal consisting of a screen and a teletype. Results showed that the covert paradigm was the most effective. The experiment did not demonstrate that the covert process leads to better performance on a test administered later to measure retention. A tentative explanation for this negative result was that the time interval between the provision of feedback and presentation of the next item was of some relevance. A multiple comparison test revealed that the 3 treatment groups performed better than the control group.     

Redesigning problem-based learning in the knowledge creation paradigm for school science learning

The introduction of problem-based learning into K-12 science classrooms faces the challenge of achieving the dual goal of learning science content and developing problem-solving skills. To overcome this content-process tension in science classrooms, we employed the knowledge-creation approach as a boundary object between the two seemingly contradicting activities: learning of science content and developing problem-solving skills. As part of a design research, we studied a group of Grade 9 students who were solving a problem related to the Law of Conservation of Energy. Through the lens of the activity theory, we found that students’ understanding of the intended science knowledge deepened as they made sense of the disciplinary-content knowledge in the context of the problem and concurrently, the students successfully developed solutions for the problem. This study shows that developing problem-solving competencies and content learning need not be disparate activities. On the contrary, we can harness the interdependency of these two activities to achieve dual goals in learning.     

The use of motor activity learning in the development of science concepts with slow learning fifth grade children

This study compared the motor activity technique of learning, using physical education activities, with traditional ways of developing science concepts with fifth grade slow learning children. Two groups of ten children each were equated on the basis of pretest scores. Both groups were taught by the same classroom teacher. One group was taught through motor activity learning and the other by traditional procedures. Both groups were retested after a two-week teaching period, and again after a three-month extended interval. The difference in the posttest scores favored the motor activity learning group, p < .01 (t = 4.33, df 9). The difference in the extended interval test also favored the same group, p < .001 (t = 6.37, df9). Using the differences in test scores as criteria for learning, the children in the motor activity learning group learned and retained significantly more than those in the traditional group.     

元认知策略在“先行组织者”使用中的作用

"先行组织者"是美国教育心理学家奥苏伯尔根据认知结构的特点,在意义学习的基础上发展起来的一种具体的教学策略。本研究在进行"先行组织者"的教学活动中,将学生"元认知策略"的因素考虑进来,试图探索元认知策略在"先行组织者"教学中的作用。     

Early science learning: The effects of teacher talk

Our study addresses the relationship between teacher talk and children’s conceptual learning in early science instruction. We examined the role of teacher talk in N = 32 kindergarten classes. The teachers were video-recorded at the beginning of a four-week instruction phase while assisting a group of children who were dealing with a learning unit on floating and sinking. The coding of teacher talk included expressions that were pertinent to the content (content-specific vocabulary) and talk that performed an underlying scaffolding function (scaffolding utterances). Teachers’ scaffolding utterances were assigned to four sub-types. The children’s conceptual understanding was measured in individual sessions in a pre-post design. The results of two different analytic approaches indicated that the teachers’ content-specific language acted as a positive predictor of the children’s learning outcomes whereas both positive and negative effects were found with respect to the sub-types of scaffolding utterances.     

Evaluating the effects of analogy enriched text on the learning of science: The importance of learning indexes

Research has shown that differences in the prior knowledge of the participants and in the learning indexes adopted can explain why some studies show positive learning effects of analogy enriched text while others do not. In the present studies, these two factors were combined into one through the construction of a learning index that measured incremental positive changes in the participants' prior knowledge after reading an analogy enriched or no analogy text. A second learning index was also used to evaluate whether the participants created well-formed conceptual models after reading the science text. These learning indexes were used in two studies in which the effects of analogy enriched versus no analogy text were compared on the learning of the scientific explanations of the day/night cycle and of the seasons. The participants were 3rd and 5th graders in the first study and 6th graders and college students in the other. Although only few of the participants learned the correct scientific explanation, those who read the analogy enriched text produced more incremental positive changes in their pretest explanations at posttest and delayed test and created more well-formed conceptual models close to the scientific one than those who read the no analogy text. They also recalled more information and created fewer invalid inferences in their recalls. The results indicate that analogies can be used without reservation to facilitate the learning of science and have broader implications about how to evaluate the learning of science in general.     

Effects of a professional development program on science teacher knowledge and practice,and student understanding of interdisciplinary science concepts

Situated in the context of an in-service professional development (PD) program focused on Interdisciplinary Science Inquiry, this quantitative study tests the validity of and further explores the theoretical model adapted from Desimone's (2009), Educational Researcher, 38, 181–199 conceptual framework on effectiveness of PD. The participants include 204 teachers and 5,581 students within 12 local public schools from 2012 to 2016. The multilevel models indicate that PD participation, school-, and teacher-level factors influence teacher pedagogical content knowledge and inquiry instruction in different ways. Furthermore, the inquiry instruction significantly relates student understanding of interdisciplinary science concepts (ISCs) through a few mediators. Therefore, this study reinforces calls to provide teachers with high quality PD and contributes to current knowledge base of the mechanisms of how inquiry instruction influences students' understanding of ISCs.     

The effects of computer-supported self-regulation in science inquiry on learning outcomes,learning processes,and self-efficacy

Recently, researchers have demonstrated the benefits of technology-enhanced science inquiry activities. To improve students’ self-regulation and assist them in controlling their own learning pace through inquiry activities, in this study, a self-regulated science inquiry approach was developed to assist them in organizing information from their real-world exploration. A quasi-experimental design was conducted in an elementary school natural science course to evaluate the students’ performance using the proposed learning approach. One class assigned as the treatment group learned with the self-regulated science inquiry approach, while the other class assigned as the control group learned with the conventional science inquiry approach. The students’ learning achievement, tendency of information help seeking, tendency of self-regulation, and self-efficacy were evaluated. The results of the study revealed that the self-regulated science inquiry approach improved the students’ learning achievement, especially for those students with higher self-regulation. In addition, the students who conducted inquiry with the self-regulated learning strategy increased their tendency of information help seeking, self-efficacy, and several aspects of self-regulation, including time management, help seeking, and self-evaluation. Accordingly, this study demonstrated the effectiveness of the self-regulated learning strategy, an approach with high learner control, in terms of improving students’ learning achievement and their self-regulation.