Results (
Thai) 1:
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Students in both groups learned with exactly the same text material.
To make sure that students in the control group learned
with the same amount of information as students in the drawing
group, all elements of the drawing prompt as well as the spatial
relations between these elements were also described in the science
text.
The two posttests intended to assess the learning outcomes were
a comprehension posttest and a drawing posttest. The comprehension
posttest (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.83) consisted of 25 multiplechoice
items (the same items as in the comprehension pretest) and
was intended to assess students’ comprehension of the factual and
conceptual information covered in the text as well as their ability
to transfer what was presented to new situations. An item example
is “T-helper cells do not only recognize viruses, but also agents that
are extraneous to the body. Which medication would you administer
to a patient, who has received a new kidney? (a) a medicine
that suppresses the immune response of the body, (b) a medicine
that activates the immune response of the body, (c) a medicine that
contains antigens, or (d) amedicine that contains blood of the kidney
donor” [(a) is the correct answer]. The drawing test (Cronbach’s
alpha = 0.81) was intended to assess students’ comprehension of the
conceptual information presented in the science text by means of
drawing. That is, students had to reproduce the main ideas given
in the text by drawing. It consisted of three drawing items, in which
students were asked to draw sketches depicting key concepts of the
text and their spatial relations. An item example for the drawing
test is “How does an influenza virus invade a cell, and how is it reproduced?”
The science text, the drawing prompt and the learning
outcome tests were constructed by the first author in cooperation
with a biology teacher. The materials were adapted from
Schwamborn et al. (2010); however, using another science domain,
and including measures of individual learning times and cognitive
load.
2.3. Procedure
Participants were tested in the schools’ classrooms. Within their
classes, they were randomly assigned to one of the two groups.
Groups were tested in separate classrooms, in order to insure that
students in the drawing group did not feel rushed when students
in the control group completed the task early. Each student was
seated at an individual desk. First, students were given the participant
questionnaire and the comprehension pretest to complete at
their own rate. Second, students filled in the paper-folding test with
a 3 min time limit. Third, students were given instructional booklets
corresponding to their assigned group. After they had read the
instructions for reading the booklets, students’ current motivation
for doing the learning taskwas assessed. Next, students started learning
with the text material corresponding to their treatment group.
Students were instructed to carefully read the text on the biology
of the influenza in order to comprehend the material. Students in
the drawing condition were instructed to read the text and additionally
to draw pictures for each text paragraph using the drawing
prompt representing the main ideas of each text paragraph. That
is, students had to use the pictorial elements given in the legend
such as the virus as templates for their own paper-pencil based
drawing across the pre-dawn background. Students in the control
group were instructed to read the text for comprehension, but were
not instructed to engage in drawing. Students in both groups learned
at their own pace, whereby individual learning time was measured
by the instructors in the classrooms. Fourth, in order to ensure
comparable testing procedures after finishing learning with the
whole learning material, students in both groups directly rated the
amount of mental effort he or she had invested during learning and
the amount of difficulty he or she had perceived during learning.
Fifth, students received the comprehension posttest consisting of
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