The effects of generating examples on comprehension and metacomprehension.

Abstract

Teachers and students often report using examples to support learning. Research has shown benefits of viewing provided examples and generating examples during declarative concept learning; however, there is less work showing clear benefits when learners generate their own examples on comprehension measures while students are attempting to learn from expository science texts. The present study tested whether generating examples would be useful for improving comprehension and comprehension monitoring in the context of an undergraduate science course. In a pre-post design, students completed an initial reading activity, followed by taking practice tests on each topic. Some students were assigned to complete an additional example generation activity after taking the practice tests. Some students also evaluated the quality of generated examples and received explanatory feedback. While there was an overall improvement in comprehension for all students, those who generated examples without the opportunity to evaluate the quality had the smallest overall learning gains. Students who evaluated the quality of examples showed the greatest learning gains on application-based test questions. And, although overall overconfidence decreased, there were no differences between conditions. These results suggest that example generation may not always be as helpful for improving learning as many students and teachers assume. Public Significance StatementExamples are often used in classrooms by students and teachers to support learning from text. This study, conducted in an entry-level psychology course at a minority-serving institution, indicated that generating examples as a study activity was not beneficial for student learning and even harmed learning when the activity was conducted without guidance.