The Effects of Using Response Cards on Student Participation, Academic Achievement, and On-Task Behavior During Whole-Class, Math Instruction

This study evaluated the effects of using response cards during whole-group math instruction in a fourth-grade classroom, using an ABA research design. During both A and B conditions the classroom teacher conducted her math lessons as planned. However during the A conditions, hand-raising (HR) was in effect. That is, when the teacher asked a question she instructed the students to raise their hands and after each question she called on one student whose hand was raised. During the B condition, response cards (RC) were in effect. Whenever she asked a question, the teacher instructed the entire class to write their answers on individual response cards. After each question, the teacher instructed the entire class to hold up their RC. Data were collected on five students who represented the class range in general level of participation, academic skills, and on-task behavior. Results indicated that student participation, specifically the number of student-initiated opportunities to respond and the number of student responses were higher when using RC than when HR was in effect. Students scored higher on the weekly math quiz after the RC condition than after the HR conditions. The percentage of intervals that students were on-task also was higher when RC were used.     

Using response cards to increase student participation in an elementary classroom

The use of response cards during large-group social studies instruction was evaluated in a fourth-grade classroom. The experiment consisted of two conditions, hand raising and write-on response cards, alternated in an ABAB design. During baseline, the teacher called upon 1 student who had raised his or her hand in response to the teacher's question. During the response-card condition, each student in the class was provided with a white laminated board on which to write one- or two-word answers in response to each question asked by the teacher. Rate of active student response during instruction was much higher with response cards than with hand raising. Most students scored higher on daily quizzes following sessions in which response cards were used than they did on quizzes that followed hand-raising sessions. Response cards were preferred over hand raising by 19 of the 20 students in the class.     

EFFECTS OF RESPONSE CARDS DURING LESSON CLOSURE ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY STUDENTS IN AN EARTH SCIENCE COURSE

This study evaluated the effects of two review techniques on secondary students' recall of science lesson content: (a) an active review condition in which students used response cards to answer questions, and (b) a passive review condition in which students looked and listened while the teacher projected and read key lesson points. Scores on next-day and weekly tests were higher on lesson content reviewed with response cards.     

Increasing Active Student Responding in a University Applied Behavior Analysis Course: The Effect of Daily Assessment and Response Cards on End of Week Quiz Scores

The study compared the effects of daily assessment and response cards on average weekly quiz scores in an introduction to applied behavior analysis course. An alternating treatments design (Kazdin 1982, Single-case research designs. New York: Oxford University Press; Cooper et al. 2007, Applied behavior analysis. Upper Saddle River: Merrill/Prentice Hall) was used to analyze the effects of response cards and daily assessment on average weekly quiz scores. Differential treatment effects were found between the daily assessment and response card conditions. When compared to baseline, students’ consistently earned higher quiz scores on end of week quizzes in the daily assessment condition. Response cards produced mixed results. More substantial effects were revealed when analyzing individual student performance. In some cases, twice as many students earned 90% or better when either response cards or daily assessment were used compared to baseline. We discuss the implications of these results for other content areas and student demographics.     

Effects of response cards on student participation and academic achievement: A systematic replication with inner-city students during whole-class science instruction

We evaluated the use of response cards during science instruction in a fifth-grade inner-city classroom. The experiment consisted of two methods of student participation-hand raising and write-on response cards-alternated in an ABAB design. During hand raising, the teacher called upon 1 student who had raised his or her hand in response to the teacher's question. During the response-card condition, each student was provided with a laminated board on which to write one- or two-word answers in response to each question asked by the teacher. Frequency of active student response was 14 times higher with response cards than with hand raising. All 22 students scored higher on next-day quizzes and on 2-week review tests that followed instruction with response cards than they did on quizzes and tests that covered facts and concepts taught with the hand-raising procedure.     

奖赏和损失情境下男性海洛因戒断者的风险决策缺陷

摘 要 采用修改版的多伦多赌博任务考察决策情境对海洛因戒断者风险决策的影响。研究结果主要发现,海洛因戒断者在损失情境下的风险寻求决策比率与吸毒年限显著正相关,这种相关提示了风险决策背景下海洛因成瘾者持续使用毒品与其较低的损失敏感性之间的复杂交互作用。其次,海洛因戒断者在做出风险决策后收到消极反馈时的风险规避倾向可以负向预测其风险寻求决策比率,这可能进一步反映了海洛因戒断者风险感知的钝化或其对消极反馈信息的整合加工存在异常。     

Factors Influencing Levels of Credit‐Card Debt in College Students1

The current study examined the relationship between money attitudes, impulsivity, locus of control, life satisfaction, and stress and credit‐card debt in 227 college students. Students reported an average credit‐card debt of $ 1,518, with over 75% of students holding at least one credit card. Students with credit cards from on‐campus solicitation had higher debt‐to‐income ratios than did those with credit cards from other sources. Personality variables were generally unrelated to level of debt, although they were related to attitudes toward money. Many students requested information about credit and debt, suggesting that knowledge of financial issues may be an important variable for future consideration.     

Personality Factors,Money Attitudes,Financial Knowledge,and Credit‐Card Debt in College Students1

The issue of credit‐card debt among college students has received increasing attention. This study explored factors hypothesized to be causes and effects of credit‐card debt in 448 students on five college campuses. Students reported an average of $1,035 (SD=$1,849) in debt, including students without credit cards or credit‐card debt. Lack of financial knowledge, age, number of credit cards, delay of gratification, and attitudes toward credit‐card use were related to debt. Sensation seeking, materialism, the Student Attitude Toward Debt scale, gender, and grade point average were not unique predictors of debt. Students reporting greater debt reported greater stress and decreased financial well being. Results highlight the need for comprehensive financial literacy education among college students.     

British and American attitudes toward credit cards

American university students owned more than twice as many credit cards as British university students. However, scores on a credit card attitude scale predicted the number of cards owned by respondents in both countries.     

A Comparison of Active Student Response and On-Task Instruction on the Acquisition and Maintenance of Health Facts by Fourth Grade Special Education Students

An alternating treatments design was used to compare the effects of active student response (ASR) and on-task (OT) instruction on the acquisition and maintenance of health facts during small-group lessons. Five students with learning difficulties (4 students identified as developmentally handicapped and 1 student identified as learning disabled) participated in daily instruction on weekly sets of 20 unknown health facts (10 facts assigned to the ASR condition and 10 to the OT condition). During ASR instruction, the teacher modeled the correct response to a health question that was presented visually on a health fact card, and the students immediately repeated the correct response in unison three times. During OT instruction, students attended visually to the health fact card as the teacher modeled the correct response. All 5 students made more correct responses on end-of-day tests on health facts taught with ASR instruction than they did on health facts taught with OT instruction. ASR instruction also produced consistently superior results on maintenance tests administered 2 weeks after instruction.     

Materialism and credit card use by college students

Much has been written in the popular press on credit card use and spending patterns of American college students. The proliferation of credit cards and their ease of acquisition ensure that students today have more opportunities for making more credit purchases than any other generation of college students. Little is known about the relationship between students' attitudes towards materialism and their use of credit cards. A study was conducted at three college campuses in the northeastern part of the United States where a total of 1,022 students were surveyed. Students' attitudes toward use of credit and their credit card balances were evaluated relative to their scores on Richins and Dawson's Materialism Scale (1992). Our findings suggest no significant difference between those individuals scoring high versus low on the Materialism Scale in terms of the number of credit cards owned and the average balance owed. Individuals high on materialism, however, significantly differed in terms of their uses for credit cards and their general attitude toward their use.     

The effects of different forms of feedback on fuzzy and verbatim memory of science principles

Background. Previous models of the effects of feedback account for lower‐order learning outcomes but do not adequately describe experimental findings for higher‐order learning. Aims. Based on a connectionist model of feedback effects, this investigation aims to show that feedback that allows only one learner response facilitates proposition‐specific verbatim encoding, while feedback that requires the learner to try again on error facilitates relational fuzzy encoding. Sample and methods. Volunteer high school students were randomly assigned to one of 5 print‐based lesson treatments that consisted of four science expository texts with adjunct inference‐level questions covering science principles. The five treatments included delayed feedback, single‐try immediate feedback, multiple‐try immediate feedback, and two control treatments, questions without feedback, and text only. A post‐test given 5 days after instruction was designed to measure both verbatim and fuzzy outcomes. Results. Multiple‐try immediate feedback was best for paraphrased post‐test questions (fuzzy) and worse for verbatim post‐test questions. Conclusions. Fuzzy trace theory complements a connectionist model of feedback, and may provide a fruitful approach for describing the effects of feedback on different learning outcomes.     

What's Context Got to Do with It? Comparative Difficulty of Test Questions Influences Metacognition and Corrected Scores for Formula‐scored Exams

Summary: On formula‐scored exams students receive points and penalties for correct and incorrect answers, respectively, but they can avoid the penalty by withholding incorrect answers. However, test‐takers have difficulty strategically regulating their accuracy and often set an overly conservative metacognitive response bias (e.g., Higham, 2007). The current experiments extended these findings by exploring whether the comparative difficulty of surrounding test questions (i.e., easy vs. hard)—a factor unrelated to the knowledge being tested—impacts metacognitive response bias for medium‐difficulty test questions. Comparative difficulty had no significant influence on participants' ability to choose correct answers for medium questions, but it did affect willingness to report answers and confidence ratings. This difference carried over to corrected scores (scores after penalties are applied) when comparative difficulty was manipulated within‐subjects: Scores were higher in the hard condition. Results are discussed in terms of implications for interpreting formula‐scored tests and underlying mechanisms of performance.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Questioning as an instructional method: Does it affect learning from lectures?

What can be done to improve student engagement and learning in college lectures? One approach is to ask questions that students answer during the lecture. In two lab experiments, students received a 25‐slide PowerPoint lecture in educational psychology that included four inserted multiple‐choice questions (questioning group) or four corresponding statements (control group). Students in the questioning group used a personal response system (PRS), in which they responded to questions using a hand‐held remote control, saw a graph displaying the percentage of students voting for each answer, and heard the teacher provide an explanation for the correct answer. Students in the control group received the corresponding slide as a statement and heard the teacher provide an explanation. The questioning group outperformed the control group on a retention test in Experiment 1 (d = 1.23) and on a transfer test in Experiment 2 (d = 0.74), but not on other tests. The results are consistent with a generative theory of learning, and encourage the appropriate use of questioning as an instructional method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modifying Students' Classroom Behaviors Using an Electronic Daily Behavior Report Card

This study examined the effects of e-mailed daily behavior report cards (DBRC) on students' disruptive classroom behaviors. Additionally, teacher acceptability of e-mailed DBRC as an intervention was assessed. Participants included 46 elementary students (37 males and 9 females), that were assigned to one of three conditions; delayed treatment control, e-mailed DBRC, and e-mailed DBRC with performance feedback. Student behaviors were measured by direct observations and teacher ratings. Results suggest that e-mailed DBRC can decrease students' disruptive behaviors, that e-mailed DBRC with performance feedback did not produce superior outcomes, and that e-mailed DBRC was perceived as acceptable.     

Item-by-Item Versus End-of-Test Feedback in a Computer-Based PSI Course

This study examined the effects of three different types of computer feedback on the following variables in a Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) course: unit quiz and final exam performance, the amount of time tutors and other teaching staff spent answering student questions, and students' preference for each type of feedback. The feedback conditions were the following: (a) end-of-test, (b) item-by-item with the option to skip questions during the test, and (c) item-by-item without the option to skip questions during the test. Students who received item-by-item feedback with the skip option performed the same as students who received end-of-test feedback on the unit quizzes and final exam. However, the teaching staff spent significantly less time answering questions when students received item-by-item feedback with the skip option than when they received end-of-test feedback. Finally, 65% of the students preferred item-by-item feedback with the skip option. The authors concluded that this type of item-by-item feedback decreases the workload on teaching staff in a PSI course without sacrificing performance, and students like it more than the other types of feedback.     

Enhancing Immediate Retention with Clickers Through Individual Response Identification

Classroom audience response systems, in which students respond to class questions via a remote ‘clicker’ unit, are widely used as a method for increasing student participation and providing immediate feedback in the form of a group frequency distribution. The phenomenon of social facilitation shows that task performance can be enhanced with co‐action of others or with the presence of an audience. To enhance the audience effect, we employed a unique feedback system that displays each individual's response. After reading a text passage, participants responded via a remote clicker to a series of comprehension questions. Participants were provided with no feedback regarding other respondents' answers, group feedback, or individual feedback. The results demonstrated significantly higher test performance with individual response identification. Implications are discussed in terms of applied classroom settings and social facilitation with enhanced options for displaying different types of feedback with clickers during instruction. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Instructor Feedback for College Writing Assignments in Introductory Classes

We compared three instructor feedback protocols to determine whether minimal instructor feedback could improve undergraduate students' writing skills in large introductory classes. The three feedback conditions were specific feedback, nonspecific feedback, and grade only. Sixty community college students participated in the study. Sections of an Introduction to Human Services course were randomly assigned to the three feedback conditions. Students wrote 9 timed essays during the semester. Pretest data were collected from the first essay at the beginning of the semester. Posttest data were taken from the final essay. Data for each student's essays consisted of the number of words written, the number of spelling errors, and the number of syntax grammar errors. Between the pretest and the posttest, students wrote 7 timed essays during class periods. Students in the specific feedback condition received a tally of spelling and grammar errors on grade criteria sheets and the location of the errors marked on their essays. In the nonspecific feedback condition, students received a tally of the errors on their grade criteria sheets but the locations of the errors were not marked on the essays. In the grade only condition, students received feedback on the number of points they had earned for each essay. Significant differences were found for pretest–posttest difference (gain) scores for the proportion of errors to the number of words written between the specific feedback condition and the grade only condition. Specific feedback decreased the proportion of errors to words written. The grade only condition maintained the same proportion of errors to words written from pretest to posttest. Significant differences were also found between difference (gain) scores for total errors between the specific feedback condition and the grade only condition and between the nonspecific feedback condition and the grade only condition.     

反馈时间、反馈类型和掩蔽类型对概率类别学习的影响

通过操纵反馈时间(即时,延迟)、反馈类型(简单,丰富)和掩蔽类型(塔罗牌,空白矩形),考察概率类别学习的学习机制。结果发现:(1)被试的学习成绩在即时反馈条件下显著优于在延迟反馈条件下;(2)在即时反馈条件下,仅给予简单反馈,被试虽能出色地完成天气预报任务,但是不能正确地判断卡片预测晴天的概率,倾向内隐学习;(3)在其他条件下,被试能正确地判断卡片预测晴天的概率以及各卡片在天气预报任务中预测天气的重要程度,表明被试能外显地意识到这些线索的作用。综上,概率类别学习采用的是双系统学习机制,既依赖内隐学习,又依赖外显学习。     

Promoting response variability and stimulus generalization in martial arts training

The effects of reinforcement and extinction on response variability and stimulus generalization in the punching and kicking techniques of 2 martial arts students were evaluated across drill and sparring conditions. During both conditions, the students were asked to demonstrate different techniques in response to an instructor's punching attack. During baseline, the students received no feedback on their responses in either condition. During the intervention phase, the students received differential reinforcement in the form of instructor feedback for each different punching or kicking technique they performed during a session of the drill condition, but no reinforcement was provided for techniques in the sparring condition. Results showed that both students increased the number of different techniques they performed when reinforcement and extinction procedures were conducted during the drill condition, and that this increase in response variability generalized to the sparring condition.