Effects of three diagram instruction methods on transfer of diagram comprehension skills: The critical role of inference while learning

Cromley, Jennifer G.; Bergey, Bradley W.; Fitzhugh, Shannon L.; Newcombe, Nora S.; Wills, Theodore W.; Shipley, Thomas F.; Tanaka, Jacqueline C.

doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.01.003

Cited by 56 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…We believe that the utility of sketching for promoting learning in this way is not limited to chemistry, but extends to all STEM domains where sketches are integral to communication. Emerging research from other domains, such as geology (Gagnier, Atit, Ormand, & Shipley, ) and biology (Cromley et al., ), have begun to demonstrate that sketching promotes learning about scientific phenomena more broadly. Moreover, the extant work on drawing for learning from science texts (e.g., Gobert, ; Schwamborn, Mayer, Thillmann, Leopold, & Leutner, ; VanMeter & Firetto, ) strongly show that drawing can improve student understanding of science concepts and enhance retention with appropriate attention to the design of the drawing activities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies are an important entry point into understanding how drawing can support science learning with and without dynamic visualizations, but questions remain about how drawing supports learning mechanistically. For example, it is not clear whether drawing activities are more effective in general than simple self‐explanation prompts and teacher‐produced illustrations (see Cromley et al., ) or whether peer interaction is a necessary component of drawing activities when dynamic visualizations are present (Chang et al., ). The present research also does not provide clear recommendations regarding when drawing activities provide optimal support during learning or what the lasting effects of drawing are on understanding and recall.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sketching the Invisible to Predict the Visible: From Drawing to Modeling in Chemistry

Cooper

Stieff

DeSutter

2017

Topics in Cognitive Science

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Sketching as a scientific practice goes beyond the simple act of inscribing diagrams onto paper. Scientists produce a wide range of representations through sketching, as it is tightly coupled to model-based reasoning. Chemists in particular make extensive use of sketches to reason about chemical phenomena and to communicate their ideas. However, the chemical sciences have a unique problem in that chemists deal with the unseen world of the atomic-molecular level. Using sketches, chemists strive to develop causal mechanisms that emerge from the structure and behavior of molecular-level entities, to explain observations of the macroscopic visible world. Interpreting these representations and constructing sketches of molecular-level processes is a crucial component of student learning in the modern chemistry classroom. Sketches also serve as an important component of assessment in the chemistry classroom as student sketches give insight into developing mental models, which allows instructors to observe how students are thinking about a process. In this paper we discuss how sketching can be used to promote such model-based reasoning in chemistry and discuss two case studies of curricular projects, CLUE and The Connected Chemistry Curriculum, that have demonstrated a benefit of this approach. We show how sketching activities can be centrally integrated into classroom norms to promote model-based reasoning both with and without component visualizations. Importantly, each of these projects deploys sketching in support of other types of inquiry activities, such as making predictions or depicting models to support a claim; sketching is not an isolated activity but is used as a tool to support model-based reasoning in the discipline.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sketching the Invisible to Predict the Visible: From Drawing to Modeling in Chemistry

Cooper

Stieff

DeSutter

2017

Topics in Cognitive Science

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“…A growing body of research in education has examined learning gains from student‐constructed versus student‐completed diagrams (Cromley et al., ; Van Meter & Garner, ). Some researchers have argued that students engage in a broader range of inferential mental processes when generating their own drawings (Van Meter et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Examples range from dash‐wedge diagrams, which illustrate atomic‐scale spatial configurations, to geologic block diagrams, which illustrate geologic structures at scales ranging from centimeters to tens of kilometers. While these types of representations are ubiquitous in STEM learning (Ainsworth, Prain, & Tytler, ; Cromley et al., ; Hegarty, ; Newcombe & Stieff, ), students struggle to interpret the 3D spatial relations conveyed in these diagrams (Kali & Orion, ; Rapp, Culpepper, Kirkby, & Morin, ; Stull, Hegarty, Dixon, & Stieff, ). A failure to understand these representations can be a barrier to success in STEM, as a key aspect of scientific practice is both understanding and self‐generating these types of representations (Ainsworth et al., ; Nersessian, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehending 3D Diagrams: Sketching to Support Spatial Reasoning

Gagnier

Atit²,

Ormand

et al. 2016

Topics in Cognitive Science

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Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines commonly illustrate 3D relationships in diagrams, yet these are often challenging for students. Failing to understand diagrams can hinder success in STEM because scientific practice requires understanding and creating diagrammatic representations. We explore a new approach to improving student understanding of diagrams that convey 3D relations that is based on students generating their own predictive diagrams. Participants' comprehension of 3D spatial diagrams was measured in a pre- and post-design where students selected the correct 2D slice through 3D geologic block diagrams. Generating sketches that predicated the internal structure of a model led to greater improvement in diagram understanding than visualizing the interior of the model without sketching, or sketching the model without attempting to predict unseen spatial relations. In addition, we found a positive correlation between sketched diagram accuracy and improvement on the diagram comprehension measure. Results suggest that generating a predictive diagram facilitates students' abilities to make inferences about spatial relationships in diagrams. Implications for use of sketching in supporting STEM learning are discussed.

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“…Berthold, Eysink, and Renkl () found that students benefited more from self‐explanation prompts using scaffolding procedures than from open self‐explanation prompts in relating multiple representations to conceptual and procedural concepts. Cromley et al () and Rau, Aleven, and Rummel () also found that self‐explanation with sufficient scaffolding fostered more inferences while learning with multiple representations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Exploring Text and Icon Graph Interpretation in Students with Dyslexia: An Eye‐tracking Study

Kim

Wiseheart

2017

Dyslexia

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A growing body of research suggests that individuals with dyslexia struggle to use graphs efficiently. Given the persistence of orthographic processing deficits in dyslexia, this study tested whether graph interpretation deficits in dyslexia are directly related to difficulties processing the orthographic components of graphs (i.e. axes and legend labels). Participants were 80 college students with and without dyslexia. Response times and eye movements were recorded as students answered comprehension questions about simple data displayed in bar graphs. Axes and legends were labelled either with words (mixed-modality graphs) or icons (orthography-free graphs). Students also answered informationally equivalent questions presented in sentences (orthography-only condition). Response times were slower in the dyslexic group only for processing sentences. However, eye tracking data revealed group differences for processing mixed-modality graphs, whereas no group differences were found for the orthography-free graphs. When processing bar graphs, students with dyslexia differ from their able reading peers only when graphs contain orthographic features. Implications for processing informational text are discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Effects of three diagram instruction methods on transfer of diagram comprehension skills: The critical role of inference while learning

Cited by 56 publications

References 50 publications

Sketching the Invisible to Predict the Visible: From Drawing to Modeling in Chemistry

Sketching the Invisible to Predict the Visible: From Drawing to Modeling in Chemistry

Comprehending 3D Diagrams: Sketching to Support Spatial Reasoning

Exploring Text and Icon Graph Interpretation in Students with Dyslexia: An Eye‐tracking Study

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