Previewing Beats Reviewing: How the Timing of Additional Instruction Affects Achievement
To achieve mastery, students often need repeated exposure to academic material. While the efficacy of increasing instruction time is well-established, there has been little research on the timing of extra help. Working with classroom teachers, we hypothesized that providing students with a preview, rather than a review, of lesson material increases achievement by buoying confidence. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted a virtual laboratory experiment in which adults (N = 901) watched an asynchronous lesson on a novel math topic paired with either a preview or a review of the topic. Compared to those who received a review of the lesson, participants who were randomly assigned to a preview (of identical content and duration) increased in self-efficacy and performed better on a post-test. Mediation analyses indicated that the benefit of previewing was partially mediated by increases in self-efficacy. These findings suggest that previews of academic material, rather than reviews, may increase student motivation and achievement.
Comments
Hi Kelly, What a great…
Hi Kelly,
What a great finding! It's amazing that the exact same exposure to instructional material led to such different outcomes. Clearly self-efficacy had something to do with it in your study. Here's my question. Do you think this is merely a question a framing (and hence is a psychological phenomenon) or was there something about the way the material was covered in the preview/review that actually made the material easier to learn if that part of the lesson was presented first versus second. That is, imagine you presented the exact same study, but labeled the conditions differently and gave a different explanation. For example, if you said "This material is particularly difficult for people (your age) to learn, so we are [giving you a preview first, and then the lesson] or [giving you the lesson and then reviewing it for you]" do you think the advantage of the "preview" would disappear? Is the advantage all about believing that you have a leg up (which might reduce anxiety and therefore make learning easier) or is there something about the sequencing of the explanations that mattered? Do you think it would make a difference if you switched from math (which is famously anxiety provoking) to a vocabulary or history lesson?
Curious to hear your thoughts!
Cheers,
Dr. Hunt
Nicely done!
Kelly,
this is a well-presented study with a compelling effect of previewing. I'm a little less convinced by the mediating effect of changes in self-efficacy, given its small size. As Dr. Hunt noted, it will be interesting to determine the mechanism, which might help develop even better applications. I enjoyed the acknowledgements as well.
Dr. Platt