Background: Formative online multiple-choice tests are ubiquitous in higher education and potentially powerful learning tools. However, commonly used feedback approaches in online multiple-choice tests can discourage meaningful engagement and enable strategies, such as trial-and-error, that circumvent intended learning outcomes. These strategies…

Background: Educational assessments increasingly shift towards computer-based formats. Many studies have explored how different types of automated feedback affect learning. However, few studies have investigated how digital performance feedback affects test takers' ratings of affective-motivational reactions during a testing session. Method: In…

Elaborative feedback (EF) containing explanations on students' responses benefits learning. Computer-based environments provide learners with EF in different ways, for example, on an immediate question-by-question basis or after answering a set of questions. Recent findings also suggest that delaying EF enhances learning. However, it is unclear to…

Retrieval practice promotes retention more than restudying (i.e., the "testing effect") and is applied to many educational settings. However, little research has investigated means to enhance this effect in educational settings. Theoretical accounts assume retrieval practice to be the most effective whenever retrieval is difficult but…

While response time and accuracy indicate overall performance, their value in uncovering cognitive processes, underlying learning, is limited. A promising online measure, designed to track decision-making, is computer mouse tracking, where mouse attraction towards different locations may reflect the consideration of alternative response options.…

Suppose learners use their free time to go online to review course materials, and they do so by taking optional tests that consist of multiple-choice questions (MCQs). What will happen if, for every practice question, there is always a choice (out of four possible choices) that is marked as "the (current) hot choice?" Will this make any…

The main objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of immersive virtual reality (VR) as a medium for delivering laboratory safety training. We specifically compare an immersive VR simulation, a desktop VR simulation, and a conventional safety manual. The sample included 105 first year undergraduate engineering students (56 females).…

This study aims to investigate secondary school students' reading comprehension and navigation of networked hypertexts with and without a graphic overview compared to linear digital texts. Additionally, it was studied whether prior knowledge, vocabulary, verbal, and visual working memory moderated the relation between text design and…

The study includes two experiments to analyse the effects of automatic formative feedback designed to promote the transfer of self-regulation of strategic decisions in task-oriented reading (e.g. answering questions from an available text). Secondary-school students read and answered multiple-choice comprehension questions from two texts having…

Peer instruction has been recognized as an instructional method having a positive impact on learning compared to traditional lectures in science. This method has been widely supported by the socio-constructivist approach to learning giving a positive role to interaction between peers in the construction of knowledge. As far as we know, no study…

This study investigated help-seeking activities in a computer-based environment teaching argumentative skills by videos of argumentative dialogues of teachers who discussed controversy issues in the context of a workshop. Learners, all of them students of educational sciences, solved learning tasks on the presented argumentative dialogues and…

Emerging research has revealed the impact of electronic media usage on student outcomes, such as satisfaction and reported learning efficacy. However, little is known of its impact on measurable knowledge acquisition. Results from this study showed that participation on discussion topics through Blackboard, an electronic discussion forum,…