Assessing structure building in college classrooms at scale

Abstract

Structure building refers to the way in which people construct meaning from incoming information by creating a foundation of mental nodes, mapping incoming information to the foundational structure, and shifting to a new structure when necessary. Structure building ability has been shown to moderate learning both in laboratory-based and classroom-based research (e.g., use of outlines for effective note-taking and course final grades, respectively). However, measurement of structure building can be resource intensive. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate a shortened, scalable measure of structure building (developed by a textbook publisher) in a real-world context. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that this tool, embedded in the online ancillary materials accompanying a textbook, can be used to measure a variable that is relevant to students' learning in introductory psychology courses. K E Y W O R D Shigher education, measurement, reader ability, structure building, translational science