Qualitative findings: students initially held inaccurate beliefs about strategy efficacy, and high effort from interleaved practice was misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · causal r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2022 · checked against its sources 2026-10-22 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In monitoring effort, participants were vulnerable to misinterpreting high effort (interleaved practice) as indicating poor learning and low effort (blocked practice) as indicating high learning, leading them to choose the less effective strategy. → Onan 2022 q2 i? Students initially had inaccurate beliefs about the efficacy of learning strategies, but on-task experiences overrode the influence of prior beliefs in strategy decisions. → Onan 2022 (2)

Evidence¶

Onan 2022¶

Onan, E., Wiradhany, W., Biwer, F., Janssen, E. M., & de Bruin, A. B. H. (2022). Growing Out of the Experience: How Subjective Experiences of Effort and Learning Influence the Use of Interleaved Practice. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09692-3

q2 · i? · causal · r3

Template analysis of open-ended responses about strategy choices and VFP prompt questions, coded iteratively by three authors, with a blind third coder applying the template to the first two datasets (50% of responses); a separate scoring of how well VFP answers matched participants' actual ratings was independently re-scored on 30% of the data (intraclass correlation = 0.89). Participants "were vulnerable to misinterpretation of effort", which led them to choose blocked practice.

"In monit oring effort, we observed that participants were vulnerable to misinterpretation of effort: High effort, associated with interleaved practice, indicated poor learning; whereas, low effort, associated with blocked prac- tice, indicated high learning."

Onan 2022 (2)¶

Onan, E., Wiradhany, W., Biwer, F., Janssen, E. M., & de Bruin, A. B. H. (2022). Growing Out of the Experience: How Subjective Experiences of Effort and Learning Influence the Use of Interleaved Practice. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09692-3

q2 · i? · causal · r?

The article's summary of its qualitative findings: students' initial beliefs about strategy efficacy were inaccurate, and "on-task experiences overrode the influence of prior beliefs" in strategy decisions.

"Qualitative results revealed that students initially had inaccurate beliefs about the efficacy of learning strategies, but on-task experiences overrode the influence of prior beliefs in learning strategy decisions."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Self-Efficacy — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Learners misjudge which learning strategies are effective — a broader claim this one bears on
• Strategy efficacy beliefs shift toward the strategy a student chooses: choosers of blocked practice raised blocked beliefs and lowered interleaved beliefs, and vice versa — related
• Students in active learning environments learned more but felt they learned less, mistaking mental effort for failure — related
• The share of students choosing interleaved practice rose from 13% to 40% across the session, but the visual feedback prompt did not further increase interleaved practice choices — related
• Perceived effort is higher and perceived learning lower for interleaving than blocking, and experience-mediated increases in perceived learning raise interleaving choices — related
• Learners associate higher effort with less effective study strategies, indicating negative connotations of effort — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• In a between-subjects experiment, students using blocked studying still reported lower mental effort and higher concurrent judgments of learning than students using interleaved studying — related