Examples, practice problems, or both? Effects on motivation and learning in shorter and longer sequences

Milou van Harsel*, Vincent Hoogerheide, Peter Verkoeijen, Tamara van Gog

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Research suggests some sequences of examples and problems (i.e., EE, EP) are more effective (higher test performance) and efficient (attained with equal/less mental effort) than others (PP, sometimes also PE). Recent findings suggest this is due to motivational variables (i.e., self-efficacy), but did not test this during the training phase. Moreover, prior research used only short task sequences. Therefore, we investigated effects on motivational variables, effectiveness, and efficiency in a short (Experiment 1; four learning tasks; n = 157) and longer task sequence (Experiment 2; eight learning tasks; n = 105). With short sequences, all example conditions were more effective, efficient, and motivating than PP. With longer sequences, all example conditions were more motivating and efficient than PP, but only EE was more effective than PP. Moreover, EE was most efficient during training, regardless of sequence length. These results suggest that example study (only) is more effective, efficient, and more motivating than PP.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)793-812
Number of pages20
JournalApplied Cognitive Psychology
Volume34
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2020

Funding

The authors would like to thank the math teachers of the study programs, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering of Avans University of Applied Sciences for facilitating this study. The authors would also like to thank Jos van Weert, Rob M?ller, and Bert Hoeks for their help in developing the materials, Marlies Otten, Lottie Raaijmakers, Maud Muskens, Gabrielle Peeters, Marleen de Haan, and Hans Slabbekoorn for their help with the data collection, and Susan van Ravensbergen for her help with scoring the data.

Keywords

  • example-based learning
  • mental effort
  • problem-solving
  • self-efficacy
  • video modeling examples

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