This study addressed several outcomes, implications, and possible future directions for blended learning (BL) in higher education in a world where information communication technologies (ICTs) increasingly communicate with each other. In considering effectiveness, the authors contend that BL coalesces around access, success, and students’ perception of their learning environments. Success and withdrawal rates for face-to-face and online courses are compared to those for BL as they interact with minority status. Investigation of student perception about course excellence revealed the existence of robust if-then decision rules for determining how students evaluate their educational experiences. Those rules were independent of course modality, perceived content relevance, and expected grade. The authors conclude that although blended learning preceded modern instructional technologies, its evolution will be inextricably bound to contemporary information communication technologies that are approximating some aspects of human thought processes.

/pdf/blended-learning-the-new-normal-and-emerging-technologies-gpgd3lpa00.pdf

Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies

We compared students’ self-reported perception of learning with their actual learning under controlled conditions in large-enrollment introductory college physics courses taught using 1) active instruction (following best practices in the discipline) and 2) passive instruction (lectures by experienced and highly rated instructors). Both groups received identical class content and handouts, students were randomly assigned, and the instructor made no effort to persuade students of the benefit of either method. Students in active classrooms learned more (as would be expected based on prior research), but their perception of learning, while positive, was lower than that of their peers in passive environments. This suggests that attempts to evaluate instruction based on students’ perceptions of learning could inadvertently promote inferior (passive) pedagogical methods. For instance, a superstar lecturer could create such a positive feeling of learning that students would choose those lectures over active learning. Most importantly, these results suggest that when students experience the increased cognitive effort associated with active learning, they initially take that effort to signify poorer learning. That disconnect may have a detrimental effect on students’ motivation, engagement, and ability to self-regulate their own learning. Although students can, on their own, discover the increased value of being actively engaged during a semester-long course, their learning may be impaired during the initial part of the course. We discuss strategies that instructors can use, early in the semester, to improve students’ response to being actively engaged in the classroom.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/39/19251.full.pdf

Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom.

http://www.anneboring.com/uploads/5/6/8/5/5685858/aboring_gender_biases_in_set_april_2014.pdf

Gender biases in student evaluations of teaching

A meta-analysis (435 studies, k = 994, N > 61,000) of empirical research on the effects of feedback on student learning was conducted with the purpose of replicating and expanding the Visible Learning research (Hattie and Timperley, 2007; Hattie, 2009; Hattie and Zierer, 2019) from meta-synthesis. Overall results based on a random-effects model indicate a medium effect (d = 0.48) of feedback on student learning, but the significant heterogeneity in the data shows that feedback cannot be understood as a single consistent form of treatment. A moderator analysis revealed that the impact is substantially influenced by the information content conveyed. Furthermore, feedback has higher impact on cognitive and motor skills outcomes than on motivational and behavioral outcomes. We discuss these findings in the light of the assumptions made in The power of feedback (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). In general, the results suggest that feedback has rightly become a focus of teaching research and practice. However, they also point toward the necessity of interpreting different forms of feedback as independent measures.

/pdf/the-power-of-feedback-revisited-a-meta-analysis-of-44tk89ur1r.pdf

The Power of Feedback Revisited: A Meta-Analysis of Educational Feedback Research.

We searched and meta-analyzed studies comparing flipped classroom teaching with traditional, lecture-based teaching to evaluate the evidence for the flipped classroom’s influence on continuous-lear...

/pdf/does-the-flipped-classroom-improve-student-learning-and-1ez4of5hhe.pdf

Does the Flipped Classroom Improve Student Learning and Satisfaction? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis:

Meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related

A number of studies investigating the relationship between personality and prospective memory (ProM) have appeared during the last decade. However, a review of these studies reveals little consistency in their findings and conclusions. To clarify the relationship between ProM and personality, we conducted two studies: a meta-analysis of prior research investigating the relationships between prospective memory and personality, and a study with 378 participants examining the relationships between ProM, personality, verbal intelligence, and retrospective memory. Our review of prior research revealed great variability in the measures used to assess ProM, and in the methodological quality of prior research; these two factors may partially explain inconsistent findings in the literature. Overall, the meta-analysis revealed very weak correlations (rs ranging from 0.09 to 0.10) between ProM and three of the Big Five factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. Our experimental study showed that ProM performance was related to individual differences such as verbal intelligence as well as to personality factors and that the relationship between ProM and personality factors depends on the ProM subdomain. In combination, the two studies suggest that ProM performance is relatively weakly related to personality factors and more strongly related to individual differences in cognitive factors.

/pdf/prospective-memory-personality-and-individual-differences-4jac91lwrb.pdf

Prospective Memory, Personality, and Individual Differences

Erratum to “Ethanol administration during retrieval, but not consolidation, influences the relative use of multiple memory systems” [Addiction Neuroscience 4 (2022) 100040]

The mammalian brain consists of two competing memory systems: the hippocampus-dependent cognitive memory system and dorsal striatum-dependent stimulus-response memory system, which can be influenced by drugs of abuse. The formation and retrieval of cognitive and stimulus-response memories can be acquired using a place or response strategy, respectively. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of ethanol on the relative use of the cognitive and stimulus-response memory systems and its effects on retrieval and consolidation processes. The dual-solution water maze task offers a behavioral paradigm to determine the relative preference of memory systems in rats. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained over two days on the dual-solution water maze task and were tested on the third day of the paradigm. In Experiment 1, ethanol was administered 30 min before the test day probe trial. In Experiment 2, ethanol was administered immediately after each training session. Results from Experiment 1 showed that ethanol exposure prior to test biases animals towards preferential use of the response strategy to complete the task. In Experiment 2, post-training ethanol exposure did not bias animals towards the use of either strategy on test day. The present study indicates that ethanol biases the relative use of multiple memory systems towards the use of the stimulus-response memory system through interactions with the retrieval process but not the consolidation process. Alcohol's effect on preferential use of the stimulus-response memory system has important implications for the understanding of alcohol use disorder, general addiction, and memory function. 

Daniela Wong Gonzalez

Papers

Meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related

Prospective Memory, Personality, and Individual Differences

Erratum to “Ethanol administration during retrieval, but not consolidation, influences the relative use of multiple memory systems” [Addiction Neuroscience 4 (2022) 100040]

Ethanol administration during retrieval, but not consolidation, influences the relative use of multiple memory systems