Re: [Phys-L] Learning from Books Better Than Learning from Screens?

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Part of the problem with this study is that it doesn't correct for existing
study strategies.  Those strategies may determine what medium you prefer,
and how you use it.  To really find out what is going on they need to have a
random selection of students in a controlled situation with half reading
from paper, and the other half from an Ereader.  Test for comprehension, and
then switch the groups.  In addition a survey for usual preferences can help
tease out what is going on.  My feeling is that they may be right, but their
study is far from showing it.

In either case IE works better than reading a text no matter what the format
may be.  Notice that well crafted lectures often elicit student responses
that they learned a lot, but IE with minimal lecturing tends to elicit
responses that they did not learn as much.  Tests of actual learning show a
dramatic difference in favor of IE, so the attitude survey in this research
should not surprise anyone.  One can design a course to promote the illusion
of learning, or one that produces actual learning, or it is possible but
rarely done to make one which produces both the learning and the student
conviction that they have learned.

There have been studies of multimedia and they are all over the map.  But
when the students use multimedia in a constrained setting they do perform
somewhat better.  The constraint is that the multimedia has been designed
specifically to enhance the learning, and they are on dedicated machines
with no access to other outside sources (distractions?).  Again this has not
been compared to IE, and I suspect IE still wins hands down.  Most
strategies produce low gain compared to IE, but if one combined them with IE
there might be even better results.

One study showed that guided inquiry IE won hands down over the conventional
lecture course.  A combination of IE labs with conventional lecture/labs
also won, but was as I recall 10% lower than pure IE.  So it would seem that
because people are so addicted to lectures that the latter inferior strategy
is being pursued.  Why go for second best just because you think it is
better when the testing shows it is just that, second best?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX 

> Here is an article in the U of MD Diamondback this morning.
>
> For me the trouble is that they do not explain exactly what 
> it is "mechanically" that supports their thesis.
http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/article_d4fac4a6-527d-11e4-8ce6-001a4b
cf6878.html
>