A kind of expertise reversal effect: Personalisation effect can depend on domain-specific prior knowledge

Abstract

In instructional multimedia design, it is often recommended that text accompanying pictures be presented in a personalised style to promote learning. The superiority of personalised over formal text may be explained using social agency theory (Mayer, 2005b), but it has not been investigated empirically whether such effects are valid in classroom settings, or depend on learner characteristics such as domain-specific prior knowledge. In this research, 65 pupils from the 10th grade of German grammar schools received computerised instructions about the structure of the human eye, containing static pictures and on screen text. The texts were written either in formal or in personalised style. Personalisation of the formal text was reached by replacing 130 impersonal articles with second person possessive pronouns and 24 third person articles with second person constructions. For learners with low prior knowledge, personalisation improved drawing and labeling performance, as well as the verbalisation of structural knowledge and transfer. For learners with higher prior knowledge, only labeling and drawing performance were improved, whilst structural knowledge was not affected and transfer performance was reduced.

Learning from scientific texts: personalizing the text increases transfer performance and task involvement

“…Thus, learning performance and self-reported motivation seemed to be affected by different interactions between text personalization and text formality. Stiller and Jedlicka (2010) found that learners with lower prior knowledge were more supported by the personalized text than learners with higher prior knowledge. Consistent with this pattern, low-prior-knowledge participants reported a higher task involvement than participants with higher prior knowledge when the materials were linguistically personalized.…”

“…A most important linguistic feature is whether or not the learner is addressed individually, for example, by using second-person constructions (e.g., "If your result is correct, …") as opposed to a more formal, nonpersonalized style ("If the result is correct, …"). Numerous studies employing this strategy (for a review, see Ginns et al 2013) have demonstrated that even a purely linguistic personalization can increase learning success (e.g., Ginns and Fraser 2010;Kartal 2010;Mayer et al 2004;Mayer 2000, 2004;Moreno et al 2001;Stiller and Jedlicka 2010). This effect was found in samples of 10th grade, college, and university students ranging in mean age from 16 to 23 years.…”

“…In other studies, instructional texts were personalized using purely linguistic personalization strategies, for example, by addressing the learner grammatically in the second person (e.g., Ginns and Fraser 2010). Numerous studies demonstrated that personalizing expository text (Ginns and Fraser 2010), narrated animations (Moreno and Mayer 2000;Mayer et al 2004), illustrated text (Kartal 2010;Stiller and Jedlicka 2010), computer-based learning games (Cordova and Lepper 1996), learning tests (Davis-Dorsey et al 1991), or utterances of pedagogical agents in computer-based learning programs (Moreno and Mayer 2004;Moreno et al 2001) increased learning performance compared to nonpersonalized materials or instructions (for a meta-analysis, see Ginns et al 2013).…”

Can “you” make a difference? Investigating whether perspective‐taking improves performance on inconsistent mathematical word problems

“…Finally, future research should take into account students' prior knowledge of and interest in the learning content. Both learner characteristics have been found to affect the interplay between a personalized language format and learning performance (see, respectively, Stiller & Jedlicka, ; Schrader et al, ). This would fit the more general belief that especially in mathematics, heterogeneity in motivational and emotional factors are relevant to consider in relation to learners' experiences with and performance on a task (Meece, Glienke, & Burg, ).…”

The Impact of an Instructional Model with Assistive Technology on Achievement Satisfaction of People with Physical-Motor Impairments

“…One of these is to use technology-based approaches. 2 Individuals with physical mobility impairments are defined as those whose physical limitations cause them to be dependent on special services in education or learning in terms of instructional, equipment, materials or facilities. 3,4 The term "assistive technology" refers to a wide range of tools and technologies (and associated services) that have the goal of helping people with disabilities and special instructional/rehabilitation needs to have better performance on a daily basis, to have an improved quality of life, to increase mobility and motion, to participate and to communicate, and finally to facilitate access to education and curricula.…”