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equivalent on basic characteristics. They included a participant questionnaire,
a comprehension pretest, a spatial ability test, and a
motivation questionnaire. The participant questionnaire solicited information
concerning the students’ age and sex. The comprehension
pretest consisted of 25 multiple-choice items and was intended to
assess students’ prior-knowledge of information covered in the text.
Students’ spatial ability was measured with a 10 multiple-choice
paper-folding items taken from a battery of cognitive tests developed
by Ekstrom, French, and Harman (1976). The motivation
questionnaire assessed students’ current motivation for doing the
learning task after reading the instructions before the lesson. It consisted
of nine items from the challenge and interest subscales of the
Questionnaire on CurrentMotivation (QCM) developed by Rheinberg,
Vollmeyer, and Burns (2001). Cognitive load by means of invested
mental effortwas measured using the 7-point subjective rating scale
developed by Paas (1992), which ranges from (1) very low mental
effort to (7) very high mental effort. Cognitive load by means of perceived
task difficultywas measured using the 7-point subjective rating
scale developed by Kalyuga, Chandler, and Sweller (1999), which
ranges from (1) very easy to (7) very difficult. These subjective measures
have been criticized for assessing cognitive load with only single
items (e.g., Brünken, Plass, & Leutner, 2003). However, several studies
showed the effectiveness of the rating scale by showing that the variation
in learners’ cognitive load ratings depended on variations in
task complexity or instructional design (for overviews see Paas,
Tuovinen, Tabbers, & Van Gerven, 2003; Van Gog & Paas, 2008). In
this regard, Sweller, Ayres, and Kalyuga (2011) conclude that “the
simple subjective rating scale, regardless of thewording used (mental
effort or difficulty), has, perhaps surprisingly, been shown to be the
most sensitive measure available to differentiate the cognitive load
imposed by different instructional procedures” (p. 74). For that reason
and due to the economic applicability we decided to use this kind
of cognitive load measurement, while acknowledging the limitations
of a short, self-report instrument.
The two learning booklets each included a science text on the
biology of the influenza. The text explained the causal steps regarding
an infection with influenza and regarding the immune
response, which is an unfamiliar subject for eighth graders in higher
track secondary schools due to the German curriculum. The text consisted
of approximately 850 words (in German) and was divided into
seven paragraphs (as shown in Table 1).
The drawing version of the booklet contained seven pairs of facing
pages with a text paragraph on the left page and a two-part drawing
prompt on the right page. The first part of the drawing prompt included
a legend showing all the relevant elements (in total eight
elements) for drawing a picture for that text paragraph (as shown
in the top of Fig. 1). The second part of the drawing prompt included
a partly pre-drawn background for students’ drawing (as
shown in the bottom of Fig. 1). Overall, students had to make seven
drawings, i.e., one drawing to each paragraph.
The control version of the learning booklet contained four pairs
of facing pages with one of the seven text paragraph on each page.
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
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