A cornerstone of much educational research in individualised and automated instruction (e.g., computer-based learning) is the assumption that learners be permitted to set the rate at which they work through the material to be learned. Experiments that have compared learning under conditions of self pacing (determined by the learner) and external pacing (determined by the experimenter), using a variety of tasks and populations, often have not supported this assumption. To evaluate the putative advantages of student self pacing in automated instruction, the studies in this thesis compared the effects of self-paced, and externally-paced, programmed instruction on student accuracy, retention efficiency, and satisfaction.
Under self-pacing conditions, learners completely controlled the rate of progress through learning materials; that is, although the program paused when learners were required to provide answers, score answers, and proceed to the next item, it continued as soon as the learner pressed any key. External pacing was operationalised by programming a noncontingent 10-s postfeedback delay after every item; that is, learners could not progress to a subsequent item until the delay period was over. All relevant learning material for the current item was present during the delay. In a series of experiments using an alternating conditions design, learners completed approximately 40 sets of a programmed course in behaviour analysis (Holland & Skinner, 1961). A baseline of self-pacing conditions was followed by an experimental phase in which baseline conditions were randomly alternated with one or more experimental conditions. Later experiments also included a return to baseline conditions.
In Experiments 1 and 2 externally-imposed delays resulted in greater accuracy than self pacing. This advantage occurred when the delays were accompanied by the study materials, but did not occur for a condition in which delays were presented without the learning material being visible. Hence, it was proposed that noncontingent postfeedback delays are effective because they provide a study opportunity which is otherwise not taken. In addition, imposing delays only slightly increased overall time to completion, and learners rated their satisfaction with external and self pacing similarly.
Experiments 3 and 4 replicated the accuracy advantage found for external pacing, and showed also that material learned under these conditions was recalled better in both immediate and 1-month delayed posttests. These experiments also provided information about factors that influence efficiency during completion of materials. One of these factors was a requirement that, at the end of an instructional
set, each question answered incorrectly be repeated until it was answered correctly (i.e., review feature). This is part of the standard implementation of programmed materials and had been employed in all conditions. In the earlier studies, externally-paced and self-paced conditions showed little difference in overall time to completion. It was apparent that although the externally-paced condition had an increased task time due to enforced delays, this condition did not take longer overall because more errors were made in self pacing, so more items were reviewed, and the overall time of a session was increased. Therefore, although imposing delays entailed a time cost, this was offset because it reduced the number of errors and time-consuming repeats. Experiment 4 demonstrated that when the review requirement was removed, noncontingent delays caused an increase in overall time to completion. Another factor determining efficiency was workrate during nondelay components of the task. Measures of the time learners spent responding, correcting responses, and continuing to subsequent frames, indicated that delays promoted faster workrates at each of these points. This was interpreted as evidence of a generalised escape motivation that is increased by being delayed and which offsets some of the time lost due to delays.
The final two experiments investigated the effects of reviewing incorrect items on student performance because it had been a potential confound in previous experiments. Previously, both self-pacing and external-pacing conditions required subjects to repeat incorrect items until answered correctly. It is possible that because reviewing items increased time on task (like imposed delays), they also led to compensatory changes in workrate, and influenced timing and efficiency measures. Any such influence was not controlled across experimental conditions, however, because self pacing typically resulted in more errors and larger reviews, and any influence of review size on timing measures could not be separated from the effect of delays. It was found that, compared to a no-review condition, reviews reduced efficiency and had little influence on accuracy and retention. Hence, this feature was unlikely to have interacted with the delay variable in previous experiments.
In conclusion, the results of the experiments show that self pacing reduced accuracy, retention, and workrates compared to external pacing. These studies indicate that learners often make poor choices about optimum learning conditions. They also show that small changes in the learning environment can result in consistent and substantial changes in learner performance, and that behaviour analysts have an important role to play in the design and implementation of instructional materials.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/217124 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Kelly, Glenn, mikewood@deakin.edu.au |
| Publisher | Deakin University. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.deakin.edu.au/disclaimer.html), Copyright Glenn Kelly |
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