Impact of blended learning approach on students’ achievement and mental effort

Most researchers are interested in investigating the impact of a blended learning approach (BLA) on students’ performance, yet this approach’s instructional efficiency has not yet been quantified. Therefore, this research aims is to determine the impact of teacher-created online Moodle-based materials in combination with face-to-face learning on student achievement and mental effort, i.e., to determine the instructional efficiency of applied teaching approaches at physics classes in high school. For this research, we chose to teach students physical principles of direct current, which involves abstract concepts. Using BLA, students can prepare better for a real experiment in the lab, and this approach also creates a safe environment for the student while providing the ability to demonstrate the learned physical phenomena. The Moodle platform course is developed for this purpose and implemented in a BL environment. Students are gradually guided from easier to more difficult concepts in this research, considering the working memory’s capacity and the teaching material requirements. Our results show that the students who used BLA achieved higher scores on the knowledge test, and they also used less mental effort than students that used a conventional teaching approach. We also show that instructional efficiency for BLA is positive and significantly higher than the instructional efficiency of the conventional approach. This research’s results are primarily designed for physics teachers to understand the effects of the BLA better and apply teaching approaches that respect the principles of cognitive development of a child.

Practice of Autonomous Learning Mode in the Course of “Web Design and Production”

<p>The autonomous learning model is one of the dominant learning models in the era of “Internet + education”. It is sought after by teachers and students in universities. The learning style of college students is shifting from passive to active learning. And the traditional teaching model in the course of “Web Design and Production” is easy to cause the problems of poor learning enthusiasm of students and low teaching effect. According to the characteristics of the course, this article explores how autonomous learning can stimulate students’ learning motivation and improve the learning effect of this course. It also designs a corresponding autonomous learning instructional model to mobilize students’ learning enthusiasm, and to improve the instructional efficiency of the course.</p>

The 4C/ID Model Applied to the Electrical Circuits Learning

The main objective of this chapter is to present the empirical results of an experimental study carried out with 9th grade students for teaching electrical circuits. The experimental research took place during April and May 2013. In the study, the authors compared two instructional approaches (4C/ID versus conventional). Thus, the results obtained by two groups (experimental and control) on the variables ‘performance', ‘perceived mental effort', and ‘instructional efficiency' were compared. The results revealed that, globally, the experimental group obtained better performances, with less perceived mental effort (i.e., better instructional efficiency). These results were discussed in 4C/ID-model theoretical framework.

The Influence of Representational Formats and Learner Modality Preferences on Instructional Efficiency Using Interactive Video Tutorials

This study investigated how to create effective interactive video tutorials for learning computer-based tasks. The role of learner modality preferences was also considered. A 4 × 4 between-subjects factorial design was employed to examine the influence of instruction representational formats (noninteractive static, interactive static, interactive visual-only video with onscreen text, interactive video with audio narration) and learner modality preferences (visual, aural, read/write, multimodal) on instructional efficiency. Instructional efficiency was a combined effect of test performance and perceived cognitive load during learning. The results suggested that implementing interactivity into the video tutorials tended to increase transfer performance, and the role of modality preferences was related to learners’ perceived cognitive load. The significant interaction effect on transfer efficiency indicated: (a) the auditory preference tended to exhibit better transfer efficiency with the narrated video, and (b) the read/write preference tended to exhibit better transfer efficiency with both the noninteractive static format and the captioned video. This study highlighted the importance of considering individual differences in modality preferences, particularly that of auditory and read/write learners.