Support strategy decisions by having students repeatedly monitor perceived effort and perceived learning across time¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article's forward-looking recommendation is that strategy decisions can be supported by having students monitor their subjective experiences on multiple occasions during study, so that misleading initial experiences with effortful but effective strategies can be discounted. As the authors put it, "repeated moni- toring of effort and learning have the potential to improve the use of interleaved practice". The mechanism is that students come to see that effective strategies become less effortful and more beneficial across time, which mediates strategy choice. In this study, monitoring alone (without the VFP) was already associated with a rise in interleaved choices from 13% to 40%.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Students must actually experience the strategies and rate effort and learning repeatedly across study units, not merely receive information about strategy efficacy

Constraints¶

• Even with repeated monitoring, the prevalent strategy choice remained blocked practice (60% at final choice)
• The visual feedback prompt added on top of monitoring did not further improve decisions in this study

Target Learners¶

• undergraduate students in higher education

Target Learning Goals¶

• adopting effective learning strategies such as interleaved practice
• calibrating monitoring of effort and learning

Claims¶

• Perceived effort is higher for interleaved than blocked practice and decreases over time for interleaved practice only [+W]
• Perceived learning is higher for blocked than interleaved practice at onset but increases over time for interleaved practice only [+W]
• Temporal increase in perceived learning fully mediates the effect of temporal decrease in perceived effort on choosing interleaved practice [+W]
• Qualitative findings: students initially held inaccurate beliefs about strategy efficacy, and high effort from interleaved practice was misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• 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