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- Title
Tracing Undergraduate Science Learners' Digital Cognitive Strategy Use and Relation to Performance.
- Authors
Mefferd, Kyle Castro; Bernacki, Matthew L.
- Abstract
Digital environments like learning management systems can afford opportunities for students to engage in cognitive learning strategies including preparatory reading of advance organizers including lecture outlines and self-testing using ungraded quizzes. When timed appropriately, self-testing can afford distributed practice, an optimal approach to self-testing that confers additional benefits. At a large, public university in the southwestern USA, we examined the frequency and timing of digital learning behaviors that reflect these practices in a large gateway science course and how these event types predicted exam performance of 220 undergraduates' exam grades in the first unit of a 16-week anatomy and physiology course. Coursework over this 31-day span included lessons on cytology, histology, the integumentary system, and osteology; we observed the timing and frequency of students' use of the lecture outline, ungraded self-testing quizzes, and hypothesized that those who self-regulated by downloading advance organizers before lecture (i.e., pre-reading) and utilizing quizzes to self-test (i.e., retrieval practice) and distributed this practice would achieve superior performances. Whereas students massed self-testing prior to the exam, a regression model that also included pre-reading, self-testing, and its distribution predicted achievement over and above massed practice. In authentic contexts, students used digital resources and benefitted from early lecture access or pre-reading advance organizers, and self-testing despite challenges to distribute practice and to self-test frequently and on recommended schedules.
- Subjects
RETRIEVAL practice; DIGITAL technology; LEARNING Management System; COGNITIVE learning; DIGITAL learning; HUMAN physiology
- Publication
Journal of Science Education & Technology, 2023, Vol 32, Issue 6, p837
- ISSN
1059-0145
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10956-022-10018-9