The effects of practice schedule and critical thinking prompts on learning and transfer of a complex judgment task.

Abstract

Many instructional strategies that appear to improve learners' performance during training may not realize adequate posttest performance or transfer to a job. The converse has been found to be true as well: Instructional strategies that appear to slow the learner's progress during training often lead to better posttraining or transfer performance. For example, many studies have shown beneficial effects of random over blocked practice on transfer of learning, even though blocked practice often leads to better performance during the training session. In a 2 ϫ 3 factorial experiment (N ϭ 120), with the factors practice schedule (random, blocked) and critical thinking prompts (before task, after task, none), this study investigates whether this also applies to complex judgment tasks and whether critical thinking prompts can enhance the effectiveness of particular practice schedules. It is hypothesized that prompts provided after task execution yield best transfer in a random practice schedule, whereas prompts provided before task execution yield best transfer in a blocked schedule. In line with this hypothesis, a blocked schedule led to better performance than random practice during training but not on the transfer test, where a random schedule was beneficial. The hypothesized interaction effect was also found: Critical thinking prompts after task execution significantly benefit transfer performance of participants following a random schedule, and transfer performance following a blocked schedule can be a little enhanced through providing critical thinking prompts before task execution. These results warrant instruction in critical thinking processes to teach complex judgment tasks, using random practice schedules combined with critical thinking prompts provided after task execution.

Interleaved practice in multi-dimensional learning tasks: Which dimension should we interleave?

“…A common finding in the contextual interference literature is that interleaved practice schedules facilitate long-term retention and performance on transfer tests, but lead to lower performance during the acquisition phase than blocked practice schedules (e.g., De Croock et al, 1998;Helsdingen et al, 2011;Lee & Simon, 2004;Shea & Morgan, 1979;Wulf & Shea, 2002). In our study, however, we found no difference across conditions in the performance during practice, as indicated by our analysis of the tutor log data, described above (see Fig.…”

“…Whether the notion that, in domains in which learning tasks vary across multiple dimensions (e.g., representations and task types), one should interleave learning tasks along the dimension with the greatest variability (i.e., in the present experiment task Table 6 Overview of study results on differences between conditions, obtained from HLM described in Equation (2) (De Croock et al, 1998;Helsdingen et al, 2011;van Merrienboer et al, 2002;Rohrer & Taylor, 2007;Taylor & Rohrer, 2010), but none of them have investigated whether the variability of the dimension on which learning tasks are interleaved matter. As argued, interleaving highly dissimilar learning tasks may decrease the likelihood that abstraction can occur.…”

“…In this research, the independent variable has typically been whether learning tasks were presented in "blocks" of the same type (e.g., task 1 e task 1 e task 1 e task 2 e task 2 e task 2 e task 3 e task 3 e task 3), or whether learning tasks of different types were interleaved (e.g., task 1 e task 2 e task 3 e task 1 e task 2 e task 3 e task 1 e task 2 e task 3). The contextual interference effect has been demonstrated in a variety of domains including vocabulary learning (Bahrick, Bahrick, Bahrick, & Bahrick, 1993;Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, & Rohrer, 2006;Pashler, Rohrer, Cepeda, & Carpenter, 2007), motor tasks (Hebert, Landin, & Solmon, 1996;Li & Wright, 2000;Meiran, 1996;Meiran, Chorev, & Sapir, 2000;Schmidt & Bjork, 1992;Schneider, 1985;Simon & Bjork, 2001), and cognitively more complex tasks such as solving algebra problems in mathematics (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007;Taylor & Rohrer, 2010), troubleshooting (de Croock, Van Merriënboer, & Paas, 1998Van Merriënboer, Schuurman, de Croock, & Paas, 2002), and in decision-making tasks (Helsdingen, van Gog, & Van Merrienboer, 2011). However, this research has not investigated whether the dimension on which the learning tasks are interleaved (e.g., representation or task type) matter.…”

How Should Intelligent Tutoring Systems Sequence Multiple Graphical Representations of Fractions? A Multi-Methods Study

“…Interleaved schedules, on the other hand, provide frequent opportunities to compare different graphical representations to one another (every time the student switches from one representation to the other), thus allowing students to make connections between different representations. Research shows that interleaved practice schedules lead to better long-term retention and transfer than blocked practice in a variety of domains including vocabulary learning (Bahrick et al 1993;Cepeda et al 2006), motor tasks (Hebert et al 1996;Immink and Wright 1998;Li and Wright 2000;Meiran 1996;Meiran et al 2000;Ollis et al 2005;Schmidt and Bjork 1992;Shea and Morgan 1979;Simon and Bjork 2001), algebra (Rohrer 2008;Rohrer and Taylor 2007;Rohrer 2010), troubleshooting (de Croock et al 1998;Van Merriënboer et al 2002), and decision-making tasks (Helsdingen et al 2011). However, interleaved practice schedules often result in lower performance during the acquisition phase (i.e., while students practice).…”

“…Analyzing student performance during the acquisition phase (i.e., while students learn) is particularly interesting when investigating the effects of practice schedules: a common finding is that interleaved practice schedules lead to better long-term retention and to better transfer than blocked schedules, but they often lead to worse performance during the acquisition phase (Battig 1972;de Croock et al 1998;Helsdingen et al 2011;Pashler et al 2007;Rohrer and Taylor 2007;Schmidt and Bjork 1992;Schneider 1985;Simon and Bjork 2001;Van Merriënboer et al 2002). Therefore, it is often believed that the advantage of interleaved practice over blocked practice is not apparent during the acquisition phase, but can only be detected with long-term retention tests and transfer tests administered after the acquisition phase.…”