A Test of One Learner-Control Strategy With Students of Differing Levels of Task Persistence

Abstract

One hundred fourteen sixth graders participated in a study designed to test the effects of a learner-control strategy involving choice of elaborative material in a computer-based tutorial. An Options treatment in which children were allowed to choose a variety of types of elaborative material was contrasted with two program-control treatments, including one in which all the elaborative material from the Options treatment was mandatory (Full treatment) and the other in which students saw only a core presentation but no elaborative material (Lean treatment). A second variable in the study was level of task persistence. Four levels of task persistence were created based on initial task behavior. Students within each of these four task persistence groups were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups. A multivariate repeated measures analysis of covariance (using reading ability as the covariate) was conducted on immediate and retention posttests. Results showed that under both program-control treatments, persistence was curvilinearly related to performance; that is, extremely high and low persistence groups performed more poorly than did medium persistence groups. Under the learner-control treatment, however, the highest task persistence groups performed best. Additionally, when amount of material seen was controlled for, the learner-control treatment group outperformed the program-control groups.