Human visual perception — learning at workstations

Student‐oriented versus Teacher‐centred: The effect of learning at workstations about birds and bird flight on cognitive achievement and motivation

“…Beside cognitive effects, many studies also demonstrate affective outcomes of student-oriented learning environments. For instance, learner-centred approaches provide a significantly higher 'well-being' than teacher-centred approaches (Randler & Bogner, 2006;Schaal & Bogner, 2005); a similar result is obtained for the perceived value of the biological content's personal meaningfulness (Schaal & Bogner, 2005). Additionally, social skills and social competences were more easily trained in student-oriented lessons than in cooperative learning environments (Lord, 2001).…”

“…In a follow-up study of Randler and Bogner (2006) using the same subject set the students of the hands-on approach scored higher in the post-and the retentiontest compared to the students of the conventional approach when a reduced number of bird 4 Before conducting pair-wise analyses with the Mann-Whitney U-test, H-test of Kruskal-Wallis was applied to test if any differences at all exist between the three groups. (Schaal & Bogner, 2005) without any guidance on the part of the teacher. Hence, they learnt less than in the teacher-centred approach.…”

“…Instructional materials and description of hands-on activities are provided at each workstation or given in workbooks leading the group members. The specific value of learning at workstations is that the students could work self-guided and on their own pace; they could choose the order of the workstations and the duration of engaging with a single workstation according to their interest (Hepp, 1996(Hepp, , 1999Schaal & Bogner, 2005).…”

“…to 'supporters' of a learning process (Schaal & Bogner, 2005). From a logistic point of view, workstations are useful if media used in biological lessons exist only in one copy, which is often the case for models (models and hands-on activities are seen as a motivating factor in the learning process [Berck, 2001;p.…”

“…Thus, learning at workstations might enhance students' motivation and interest and might increase their cognitive achievement, as outlined above. However, recent studies have linked student-oriented learning environments not necessarily to an overall higher cognitive learning outcome but rather to conventional approaches (Randler & Bogner, 2002;Schaal & Bogner, 2005). Potential reasons for those unexpected results could lie in the lack of experience in hands-on activities as well as open or learner-centred approaches which as unfamiliar environments may cause anxiety and thus inhibit learning success (Kagan & Fasan, 1988;Bohl, 2001;Randler & Bogner, 2002).…”