UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing Designing Instructional Parcels Girlie C. Delacruz CRESST Conference Los Angeles, CA - January 22-23, 2006

2/19 Designing Instructional Parcels Short slices of instruction (generally < 5min) that are targeted to a single concept NOT intended to replace classroom teaching Intended to support homework, review, “wrap around” activities Fusing research in cognitive science, instructional design, and multimedia learning Maximum efficiency

3/19 Research Question Will students learn from brief, targeted pieces of instruction (instructional parcels)?

4/19 Instructional Parcels Elements Cognitive load theory Schemas Analogical reasoning Worked-examples research Multimedia principles

5/19 Cognitive Load Theory Human cognition as an information processing Relation between long-term memory and working memory ( Sweller, 1998; Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998, van Merrienboer & Sweller, 2005) Random processing of information for novices results in cognitive load Schemas play key role in how people learn Schemas act as chunking devices or by cueing appropriate strategies

6/19 Schemas Act as a category descriptor (Cummins, 1992) Are generalized description of two or more problems (Gick & Holyoak, 1983) Can bind problems together in a meaningful, principled way (Chi & Ohlsson, 2005) Experts and novices differ in terms of how they think about problems (Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981).

7/19 Analogical Reasoning Detection of commonalities and differences (Markman & Gentner, 2000) Alignable differences: elements share a superordinate category Unalignable differences: no useful correspondence with each other “Multiconstraint theory” (Holyoak & Thagard, 1989): pragmatic constraints Goal and purpose influence what is to be compared Explicit comparison of problems (Gentner, Lowenstein, & Thompson, 2003; Novick & Holyoak, 1991)

8/19 Worked-examples Research Multiple examples with variablity (Paas & van Merrionboer, 1994; Quilici & Mayer, 1996) Chunking and labeling meaningful information (Catrambone 1994, 1998) Goal/How/Why

9/19 Multimedia Principles Instruction presented visually and auditorily (Mayer & Moreno, 1998; Mousavi, Low, & Sweller, 1995) Signaling: Highlighting directly relevant information via annotations (Jeung, Chandler, & Sweller, 1997; Mautone & Mayer, 2001)

10/19 Multimedia Principles

11/19 Similarity Task

12/19 Similarity Task Results a Wilcoxan signed rank test (non-parametric paired test). Scale Low/Med Prior KnowledgeHigh Prior Knowledge nPost > Predn d Adding fractions29< ns-- Multiplying fractions30ns--10ns-- Reducing fractions7< Transformations Distributive property34ns

13/19 Similarity Task Results Scale Low/Med Prior KnowledgeHigh Prior Knowledge nPost > Predn d Commutative property of addition Commutative property of multiplication 12ns-- Associative property of addition Multiplicative inverse ns-- Multiplicative identity ns--

14/19 Transformations

15/19 Transformations

16/19 Transformations

17/19 Transformations

18/19 Transformations

19/19 Transformations Demo