Year: 2007

Name: Beitzel, Brian

Title of dissertation: “Designing contrasting video case activities to facilitate learning of complex subject matter”

Chair of dissertation: Derry, Sharon J.

Institution: The University of Wisconsin – Madison

Abstract:

Schwartz and Bransford (1998) developed a knowledge-differentiation hypothesis to explain why a contrasting-cases activity prepares students to learn from a lecture or text. This experiment examined three alternative theories about cognitive mechanisms of learning, and their implications for instructional design, when the cases are realistic video clips rather than simplified text presentations: an indexical hypothesis (Glenberg & Robertson, 1999), a schema-elaboration hypothesis (Derry, in press), and a reconstructive hypothesis (Spiro, 1977). Undergraduate students acquired learning-science concepts through Web-based activities that involved studying reading material on two topics: classroom assessment and cognitive views of understanding. In addition, students in two conditions contrasted brief video cases illustrating various ways these ideas manifest themselves in real-world contexts. Students completed the contrasting-cases activity before reading in one experimental condition, and after reading in the other. Students in a control condition read the same texts and took notes but saw no video cases. Two days after instruction, students were tested on text memory and ability to use their knowledge in recognition and transfer tasks. Recall results favored the instructional design in which video cases were contrasted after reading a text, consistent with the schema-elaboration hypothesis that the reading caused activation of a foundational schema containing basic concepts that were elaborated and expanded perceptually by contrasting the video cases. However, it is argued that the particular instructional conditions activated the schema-elaboration mechanism as a support for learning; had the instructional problem been different, other hypotheses might have been favored. For example, had the text been more difficult to comprehend and unrelated to student experiences, an indexical mechanism might have been favored. In conclusion, it is suggested that aspects of the instructional context related to the readability of text and learners' prior experience and knowledge of the subject matter helped determine which learning mechanisms were promoted by the contrasting-cases instruction.