Introducing Desirable Difficulties for Educational Applications in Science Robert A. Bjork, Lindsey Richland, Jason Finley, and introducing Matt Hays UCLA Marcia C. Linn, Britte Cheng UC Berkeley

Desirable Difficulties Design principles which have been found, in laboratory research, to impair performance during training but enhance performance at a delay

IDDEAS Introducing Desirable Difficulties for Educational Applications in Science Broad Goals: extend laboratory research on learning and memory to classroom environment, explore interactions b/w DDs Narrower Goal: Implement desirable learning difficulties in a web-based science module for 8th graders, with aim of improving effectiveness of such modules

Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) A system/tool for scientific instruction Promotes knowledge integration, collaborative learning, visible thinking Contains modules on a wide variety of topics, with options to customize and to create new modules Plus: a useful research tool!

Interleaving Effect Presentation OrderImmediate TestDelayed Test Blocked - AAAABBBBBetterWorse Interleaved - ABBABAABWorseBetter

Theories Explaining Interleaving Contextual Interference (Battig, 1972, 1979) Reloading/ Reconstruction (e.g. Lee & Magill, 1983, 1985) Development of higher order framework/ Elaboration (Shea & Zimny, 1983, 1988) “It’s just the spacing effect”

Generation Background

Experiment 1 2 Sets of Information to be learned in WISE module: –Mass of a Planet –Distance of a Planet from its Sun Presentation Order: Blocked vs. Interleaved –MMMMMDDDDD vs. MDDMDMMDMD Sentence Completion: Read vs. Generate –“Mercury’s mass is less than Earth’s mass.” vs. “Mercury’s mass is ___ than Earth’s mass.”

Post-test, 2 Day Delay Simple sentence-completion: Information presented and re-studied via generation or reading, or only presented –E. g. “The amount of heat and light emitted by the sun in our solar system has increased by ____% since the beginning of earth’s history.” Integration questions across mass slides or across distance slides –E. g., “Would an object weigh more on the planets in our solar system made mostly of gas or made mostly of rock? Why? ” Integration questions across mass and distance slides –E. g., “Imagine a planet that is smaller than Earth and that was located 1.5 AUs from its sun, which is the same strength as the Earth’s sun. How would this planet’s potential for life compare to Earth’s?”

Figure 1. UCLA Study 1 - Interleaving by type of Posttest Integration Question.

Figure 2: UCLA Study 1 -Generation effects on single fact materials

Motivations for 2nd Study More educationally relevant/realistic Map onto in-classroom studies (Berkeley) Explore interactions b/w generation & interleaving Exploring one explanation for benefits of interleaving: developing higher-order framework Potentially maximizing benefits of interleaving

Experiment 2 All interleaved order Sentence level generation questions E.g., “Describe in a sentence how the size of one planet's mass can affect another planet.” –Knowledge required for successful generation: Integration of info within Mass or Distance Only Integration of info from both Mass and Distance

Next Steps, Questions Are P1 and P2 Questions easier than P3 Questions? –Control data for P3. What to do about Conditional Data. Few in Inter- Generation condition got full credit during training, so difficult to look at conditional performance.

Next Steps Material w/ more Contextual Interference? –Interleaving Habitability & Detectability Generating irrelevant yet correct info?