Designing a constructive learning activity with interactive elements: the effects of perspective-shifting and the quality of source material

ABSTRACT

When teachers or instructors create computer-based learning environments, they often solely consider technical aspects of interactivity. As a consequence, learners’ main role is to respond to requests of the learning environment (e.g. by answering multiple-choice questions). This aspect of interactivity is, however, not sufficient to understand the complex benefits of interactivity for learners’ knowledge acquisition. In order to create a higher level of interactivity, an instructional task that encourages learners to design learning materials for fellow learners is used in this paper. We will show that this instructional task can induce interactive elements because learners are encouraged to take not only their own perspective into account when designing. In addition, we investigated if the quality of source material affects knowledge acquisition in design tasks. In a two-by-two design, students (n = 108) had to design either a learning environment for others (i.e. to perform perspective-shifting), or a representation of acquired knowledge for themselves (no perspective-shifting) with less or more coherent information sources. Results indicate that performing perspective-shifting can be a powerful technique for eliciting interactive learning behavior and, thus, for learning. The quality of information sources does not influence knowledge acquisition to a great extent.

KEYWORDS:

• Interactive
• interactivity
• Learners-as-Designers
• design task
• perspective-shifting
• quality of source material

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Gregor Damnik is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology of Learning and Instruction at Technische Universität Dresden. He is currently interested in research on knowledge acquisition processes in technology-enhanced learning.

Antje Proske is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology of Learning and Instruction at Technische Universität Dresden. Her current research focuses on the development and experimental investigation of (computer-based) instructional support to foster knowledge acquisition in technology-enhanced learning, self-regulated learning, and academic writing.

Hermann Körndle is a Professor of Psychology of Learning and Instruction at the Technische Universität Dresden. He is currently engaged in (a) research on the factors in and effects of technology-enhanced interactive learning tasks and (b) research on open-ended authoring tools in various instructional contexts.