Short metacognitive prompts--like "minute papers"--are simple enough to be widely adopted by instructors. But do they work? We investigate how they affect college students' performance in quantitative (Physics) and qualitative (Psychology) courses, comparing classes which received metacognitive prompts to those that did not. We find…

In 2 experiments we examined the role of (a) specificity, (b) the type of targeted learning activities, and (c) learners' prior knowledge for the effects of relevance instructions on learning from instructional explanations. In Experiment 1, we recruited novices regarding the topic of atomic structure (N = 80) and found that "specific"…

Examines principles governing the identification of a system of parameters for accurately describing student thought processes and discusses the parametric analysis of such thought processes, taking as an example problem-solving directed towards the explanation of physical phenomena. A 25-item reference list is included. (Author/JL)

REPORTED IS A STUDY CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE RELATIVE LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING OF CERTAIN FORCE CONCEPTS ACHIEVED BY PUPILS IN GRADES 2-6. EVALUATIONS WERE MADE BY MEANS OF PENCIL-AND-PAPER MULTIPLE-CHOICE TYPE TESTS, ONE FOR EACH LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING--(1) KNOWLEDGE, (2) COMPREHENSION, AND (3) APPLICATION. SUB-PROBLEMS OF THE STUDY WERE (1) TO…

THESE LESSON PLANS WERE DEVELOPED, ALONG WITH OTHER MATERIALS SUCH AS (1) DEMONSTRATIONS, (2) FILMS, (3) FILM CLIPS, (4) KEY QUESTIONS, AND (5) POSTERS, FOR USE IN A STUDY TO DETERMINE THE RELATIVE LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING OF CERTAIN CONCEPTS OF FORCES ACHIEVED BY PUPILS IN GRADES 2-6. EVALUATION WAS MADE BY MEANS OF PAPER-AND-PENCIL…

This study was conducted to determine if the inclusion of a required objective attainment condition would increase student achievement when instruction was structured by a program that utilized student selected objectives. The following null hypothesis was formulated: no significant difference exists in the number of student selected objectives…