We wish to thank Alain Chavaillaz for his help with the eye-tracker setup and for helpful comments on previous versions of the manuscript. We also thank Martina Röthlisberger, Clara Perruchoud, Janine Wieczorek, and Dilan Cümen for their help with data collection and coding. Finally, we wish to thank the parents and toddlers who participated in this study.
Information and communication technology (ICT) becomes more prevalent in education but its general efficacy and that of specific learning applications are not fully established yet. One way to further improve learning applications could be to use insights from fundamental memory research. We here assess whether four established learning principles (spacing, corrective feedback, testing, and multimodality) can be translated into an applied ICT context to facilitate vocabulary learning in a self-developed web application. Effects on the amount of newly learned vocabulary were assessed in a mixed factorial design (3×2×2×2) with the independent variables Spacing (between-subjects; one, two, or four sessions), Feedback (within-subjects; with or without), Testing (within-subjects, 70 or 30% retrieval trials), and Multimodality (within-subjects; unimodal or multimodal). Data from 79 participants revealed significant main effects for Spacing [F(2,76) = 8.51, p = 0.0005, ηp2=0.18] and Feedback [F(1,76) = 21.38, p < 0.0001, ηp2=0.22], and a significant interaction between Feedback and Testing [F(1,76) = 14.12, p = 0.0003, ηp2=0.16]. Optimal Spacing and the presence of corrective Feedback in combination with Testing together boost learning by 29% as compared to non-optimal realizations (massed learning, testing with the lack of corrective feedback). Our findings indicate that established learning principles derived from basic memory research can successfully be implemented in web applications to optimize vocabulary learning.
As information and communication technology (ICT) becomes more prevalent in education its efficacy in general and that of specific learning applications in particular has not been fully established yet. One way to further improve learning applications could be to use insights from fundamental memory research. We here assess whether four established learning principles (spacing, feedback, testing, and multimodality) can be translated into an applied ICT context to facilitate vocabulary learning in a self-developed web application. Effects on the amount of newly learned vocabulary were assessed in a mixed factorial design (3×2×2×2) with the independent variables Spacing (between-subjects; one, two, or four sessions), Feedback (within-subjects; with or without), Testing (within-subjects, 70% or 30% retrieval trials), and Multimodality (within-subjects; unimodal or multimodal). Data from 79 participants was analyzed and revealed significant main effects for Spacing (F[2, 76] = 8.51, p = 0.0005, η^2p = 0.18) and Feedback (F[1, 76] = 21.38, p < 0.001, η^2p= 0.22), and a significant interaction between Feedback and Testing (F[1, 76] = 14.12, p = 0.0003, η^2p = 0.16). Optimal Spacing and the presence of corrective Feedback in combination with Testing together boost learning by 29% as compared to non-optimal realizations (massed learning, testing with lack of corrective feedback). Our findings indicate that established learning principles derived from basic memory research can successfully be implemented in web applications to optimize the acquisition of new vocabulary.
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