Benefits of desirable difficulties: comparing the influence of mixed practice to that of categorized sets of questions on students’ problem-solving performance in chemistry

Gulacar, Ozcan; Wu, Arista; Prathikanti, Vishwanath H; Vernoy, Brandon James; Kim, Hanna; Bacha, Tarek; Oentoro, Tiffany Callista; Reedy, Katiana Juanita; Navarrete-Pleitez, Marilyn

doi:10.1039/d1rp00334h

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…The data were collected by an adaptive, online educational platform that employs robust-although often counterintuitive-principles of cognitive science to make the material "stick" (Brown et al 2014). These include spacing, priming by pre-testing Soderstrom and Bjork 2023), requiring simultaneous confidence indication and answer selection (Soderstrom et al 2015), delaying corrective feedback to the extent it is beneficial (Butler and Roediger 2008;Swinnen et al 1990; for a review, see Kulik and Kulik 1988), repeatedly testing material until it is mastered (e.g., Karpicke and Roediger 2007), interleaving related topics (e.g., Gulacar et al 2022;Kornell and Bjork 2008), selectively presenting multimedia (Mayer and Fiorella 2014), and more. (For an in-depth system description, please see Hays et al 2019).…”

Section: Data Collection Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacognitive Management of Attention in Online Learning

Hays,

Kustes,

Bjork

2024

J. Intell.

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Performance during training is a poor predictor of long-term retention. Worse yet, conditions of training that produce rapidly improving performance typically do not produce long-lasting, generalizable learning. As a result, learners and instructors alike can be misled into adopting training or educational experiences that are suboptimal for producing actual learning. Computer-based educational training platforms can counter this unfortunate tendency by providing only productive conditions of instruction—even if they are unintuitive (e.g., spacing instead of massing). The use of such platforms, however, introduces a different liability: being easy to interrupt. An assessment of this possible liability is needed given the enormous disruption to modern education brought about by COVID-19 and the subsequent widespread emergency adoption of computer-based remote instruction. The present study was therefore designed to (a) explore approaches for detecting interruptions that can be reasonably implemented by an instructor, (b) determine the frequency at which students are interrupted during a cognitive-science-based digital learning experience, and (c) establish the extent to which the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns affected students’ metacognitive ability to maintain engagement with their digital learning experiences. Outliers in time data were analyzed with increasing complexity and decreasing subjectivity to identify when learners were interrupted. Results indicated that only between 1.565% and 3.206% of online interactions show evidence of learner interruption. And although classroom learning was inarguably disrupted by the pandemic, learning in the present, evidence-based platform appeared to be immune.

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Section: Data Collection Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacognitive Management of Attention in Online Learning

Hays,

Kustes,

Bjork

2024

J. Intell.

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“…For example, the use of CEs across the curriculum of general chemistry have shown students overlooking the limits of models across multiple topics in chemistry, and these responses give instructors an opportunity to give students feedback on their ideas or lead a whole class discussion on where a topic is applicable or not. Another approach is to offer practices and assessments that mix questions from the current and previous chapters to avoid presenting and assessing topics in a siloed fashion, which provides few opportunities to determine if previously learned models are applicable in new contexts. We cannot comment directly on the effect of employing alternative curricular approaches (e.g., spiral curriculum, learning progressions) on developing students’ explanatory models of chemical bonding, but the results here and those of previous studies ,, suggest future work should consider the impact of curriculum on students’ use of bonding models.…”

Section: Instructional Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When All You Have Is a Covalent Model of Bonding, Every Substance Is a Molecule: A Longitudinal Study of Student Enactment of Covalent and Ionic Bonding Models

et al. 2022

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This longitudinal study examines the responses of students at two different institutions to creative exercises related to models of chemical bonding. Questions in the form of creative exercises required students to provide relevant, accurate, and distinct statements about two compounds for which they were provided only the formula and electronegativity values: SCl 2 and CaCl 2 . Students responded to the questions at the end of general chemistry, six months later, and one year later. Their responses were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively to explore patterns in application of bonding ideas and change over time. The data reveal extensive application of covalent bonding ideas to an ionic compound, regardless of whether a student identified the substance as ionic or not, and that this is consistent over a year out. Implications for instruction of bonding models in general chemistry (and beyond) are discussed.

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“…Several studies in the literature have evaluated chemistry textbooks, considering different aspects. These evaluations include the representation of gender (Becker & Nilsson, 2021;Gee et al, 2022), the incorporation of green chemistry (Johnson et al, 2020), the influence of electronic textbooks and videos (Aslam & Saeed, 2022;Day & Pienta, 2019;Pulukuri & Abrams, 2021), the level and interpretation of visual representations Roncevic et al, 2019;Shehab & BouJaoude, 2017;Upahi & Ramnarain, 2019), the importance of textbooks and their utilization by teachers (Anderson et al, 2020;Vojíř & Rusek, 2022), the presence of investigative experiments or illustrations of experiments , the levels of semantic and syntactic difficulty (Quílez, 2021;Rusek & Vojíř, 2019), potential oversights in discussions (Chang et al, 2020;Jensen, 2015;Keifer, 2019;Park et al, 2020), the treatment of different models and theories (Galbraith et al, 2021), the presence of myths (Kvittingen et al, 2021), the alignment with the curriculum (Khaddoor et al, 2017), the proposed exercises (Gulacar et al, 2022), and the level of theoretical explanations (Martorano, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Bachelard’s Epistemological Obstacles in Physical Chemistry Textbooks: The Case of Thermodynamics Concepts

Souza,

Passos,

Netz

2023

Acta Sci.

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Background: Although textbooks are used at all education levels, they are not free from errors, mistakes, and misconceptions. In the literature, many works have investigated textbooks in various ways, with particular emphasis on the influence of language. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to identify types of epistemological obstacles, according to Gaston Bachelard's philosophy, associated with the Classical Thermodynamics concepts in higher education physical chemistry textbooks commonly utilised in chemistry and related programs in Brazil. Design: We employed a qualitative methodology based on content analysis to identify thermodynamics concepts and types of epistemological obstacles in higher education textbooks. Setting and participants: For the identification of epistemological obstacles, we selected three representative textbooks used in university programs: P. W. Atkins, D. Ball, and I. Levine. Data collection and analysis: We only analysed the chapters that addressed Classical Thermodynamics, specifically focusing on the concepts of temperature, heat, work, energy, internal energy, and entropy. We used a priori categories that encompassed the obstacles identified by Bachelard. Results: Our findings revealed the presence of general knowledge, verbal, substantialist, and realist obstacles in the selected textbooks, with the concepts most associated with these obstacles being heat, energy, and entropy. Conclusions: By applying Bachelard's ideas, we were able to identify epistemological obstacles in higher education textbooks. This may be one of the causes of the perpetuation of misconceptions and historical, scientific errors related to the concepts of thermodynamics.

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Benefits of desirable difficulties: comparing the influence of mixed practice to that of categorized sets of questions on students’ problem-solving performance in chemistry

Abstract: The questions in the practice assignments given to students in the form of worksheets or other formats are often grouped by chapter, topic, or concepts. There is a great emphasis...

Cited by 5 publications

References 54 publications

Metacognitive Management of Attention in Online Learning

Metacognitive Management of Attention in Online Learning

When All You Have Is a Covalent Model of Bonding, Every Substance Is a Molecule: A Longitudinal Study of Student Enactment of Covalent and Ionic Bonding Models

Exploring Bachelard’s Epistemological Obstacles in Physical Chemistry Textbooks: The Case of Thermodynamics Concepts

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