The flipped classroom approach, where students learn new content via video lectures outside class and use class time for interactive applications, is gaining popularity in higher education.  A meta-analysis by Ni and colleagues, published in the International Journal of Educational Research, explored the impact of the flipped classroom approach on college students' English learning outcomes. The meta-analysis included 24 studies conducted from 2000 to 2020, yielding 31 effect sizes. These studies focused on the use of the flipped classroom approach in English language learning, wherein instructional videos and other technological tools were employed prior to class sessions to enhance high school students' performance. All studies followed a pre-test, post-test control group design, comparing students who experienced the flipped classroom with those taught using traditional methods. The analysis revealed that flipped classrooms had a positive, moderate overall effect on learning outcomes (ES = +0.68). Examining different types of flipped classroom designs,...

According to a recent study, fewer American high school graduates, particularly those with strong grades and those from historically marginalized backgrounds, want to become a K-12 teacher. Researchers analyzed data from students who applied to a large Texas university between 2009-2020. They examined the number of applicants who expressed interest in teacher education, tracked transfers into and out of such programs while in college, and monitored how many became employed as teachers in Texas. In 2009, 13% of those applying through this common application were initially interested in teaching, while this number dropped to 6.7% by 2020. The few studies that exist on who is strongly interested in teaching indicate that the population is heavily dominated by white, female students, particularly of lower academic achievement. A leading reason students may be interested in becoming a teacher is the enjoyment of working with children. Conversely, those uninterested in teaching often cite...

Asking good questions is essential for knowledge construction and scientific learning. Wong and colleagues conducted two experiments to investigate the impact of learning-by-teaching on generating research questions, comparing it with two other generating learning techniques: retrieval practice and concept-mapping. Research questions correspond to the "create" level of Bloom's taxonomy (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create), representing the highest level of generating new knowledge through novel research inquiries. A total of 152 undergraduate students from the National University of Singapore participated in two experiments. They were instructed on generating create-level research questions and then were given a scientific text and randomly assigned to one of three learning methods: (a) constructing a concept map, (b) retrieval practice with study and retrieval intervals, or (c) teaching the text through note preparation, video lecture, and answering preset questions. In Experiment 1, the participants were tested on their ability to generate questions at the create-level...

Learning-by-teaching is a generative learning activity in which learners explain the material in a lesson to others after studying it.  Wang and colleagues conducted an experiment with 96 college students from a university in central China to compare three versions of learning-by-teaching, all without audience interaction but with varied levels of social presence, thereby leading to different levels of extraneous processing, which causes learners to engage in cognitive processing irrelevant to the instruction purpose (e.g., distraction). Participants studied a 2-minute video on chemical synaptic transmission for 9 minutes and prepared a brief lesson of less than 5 minutes under a randomly assigned one of three conditions: (1) teach-to-camera – teach to an imaginary audience by creating a video lecture; (2) teach-to-student – teach to an audience face-to-face; (3) teach-to-group – teach to seven people physically present in the room. Audiences in the latter two conditions provided no feedback. Data collecting...

With the usage of smartphones becoming increasingly pervasive, taking photos to record information in class allows students to store more information with less effort. Many studies have demonstrated that longhand note-taking facilitates the deeper encoding of information and reduces mind-wandering, but little research has investigated the learning outcomes of the photo-taking strategy, so a recent study was conducted to compare their effectiveness. The sample of this study included 100 college students between the ages of 18-32 who were divided into three subgroups to listen to two lectures in three different conditions: listening with longhand note-taking, with photo-taking, and without note-taking. After they completed both lectures, participants reviewed their hand-written notes, photos they took, and plain printouts, respectively, to prepare for a recall test. The results revealed that students who took longhand notes outperformed the other two groups. A repetitive experiment was also done to probe participants’ mind-wandering behavior by asking...

Media multitasking is an increasingly common behavior where individuals use multiple forms of media simultaneously (e.g., listening to music while chatting through social media). Heavy media multitaskers may perform poorly in some cognitive control abilities, including inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. The “scatter attention hypothesis” suggests that heavy media multitaskers are more likely to be distracted by irrelevant information, leading to poorer performance on cognitive tasks. To investigate the association between media multitasking frequency with cognitive control, Kong and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis comparing cognitive control abilities between heavy (HMM) and light media multitaskers (LMM), while also examining potential moderators including age using two groups: adolescents (12-18 years old) and young adults (18-35 years old). The sample included 118 effect sizes from 43 studies that compared at least one component of executive function between HMM and LMM using the media multitask index (MMI) or a modified version of...

Although an associate degree has been shown to increase graduates’ earnings and job security, many community college students struggle to graduate. About 66% of community college students are mandated to take remedial classes, and 60% of the remedial courses required are for math. Remedial courses usually do not earn college credit, meaning students take longer to complete their education. A longer pathway increases the chances that students will not finish their degree, leading to lower earning potential for those who dropped out than those who finished their degree. A recent study described the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT), testing the benefits of a new program assigning students at risk of math challenges to additional support at the same time that they were taking statistics in their first year of community college. Several programs experimenting with this kind of corequisite support have provided students with background knowledge and instruction...