Comparing the effectiveness of preparatory activities that help undergraduate students learn from instruction
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Date
2022-12
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
Students can learn better from instruction after first engaging in activities that prepare them to learn (Kapur, 2016; Loibl, Roll, & Rummel, 2017; Schwartz & Bransford, 1998). In this study, we compare the effectiveness of four activities that prepare university students to learn from instruction. We use productive failure, an established instructional design, as the baseline preparatory condition. In productive failure, students generate solutions to challenging but accessible problems, which serves as preparation for formal instruction. We compare this approach with three alternative preparatory activities: contrasting a correct and an incorrect solution, sensemaking of the correct solution only, and studying a fully worked-out example of the correct solution. Despite the differences in preparatory activities, participants on average performed nearly identically on most of the process and outcome measures. In universities, or with similarly advanced learners, a variety of activities may be equally effective at preparing students to learn from instruction.
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published
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Book title
Journal / series
Volume
82
Pages / Article No.
101688
Publisher
Elsevier
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Edition / version
Methods
Software
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Date collected
Date created
Subject
Preparation for future learning; Productive failure; University education; Mathematics education
Organisational unit
09590 - Kapur, Manu / Kapur, Manu