Prior research suggests most students do not glean valid cues from provided visuals, resulting in reduced metacomprehension accuracy. Across 4 experiments, we explored how the presence of instructional visuals affects students' metacomprehension accuracy and cue-use for different types of metacognitive judgments. Undergraduates read texts on biology (Study 1a and b) or chemistry (Study 2 and 3) topics, made various judgments (test, explain, and draw) for each text, and completed comprehension tests. Students were randomly assigned to receive only texts (text-only condition) or texts with instructional visualizations (text-and-image condition). In Studies 1b, 2 and 3, students also reported the cues they used to make each judgment. Across the set of studies, instructional visualizations harmed relative metacomprehension accuracy. In Studies 1a and 2, this was especially the case when students were asked to judge how well they felt they could draw the processes described in the text. But in Study 3, this was especially the case when students were asked to judge how well they would do on a set of comprehension tests. In Studies 2 and 3, students who reported basing their judgments on representation-based cues demonstrated more accurate relative accuracy than students who reported using heuristic based cues. Further, across these studies, students reported using visual cues to make their draw judgments, but not their test or explain judgments. Taken together, these results indicate that instructional visualizations can hinder metacognitive judgment accuracy, particularly by influencing the types of cues students use to make judgments of their ability to draw key concepts.

In landscape planning and design, geospatial technologies (GSTs) are used to aid in visualizing and interpreting geographic environments, identifying geospatial patterns, and making decisions around information based on maps and geospatial information. GSTs are related to the different tools and technologies used to represent the earth's surface and have transformed the practice of landscape design and geospatial education. These technologies play an important role in promoting the development and application of STEM-relevant geospatial thinking. Curricula that incorporate GSTs have been used across educational levels, from elementary school through college, and have been shown to support the development of geospatial learning and understanding. The present work discusses the use of one type of GST, virtual globes, as a tool for developing geospatial thinking, with a specific focus on Google Earth. This review highlights outcomes of several studies using Google Earth in the context of disciplines related to landscape design, such as geography and earth science. Furthermore, the potential mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of this technology for supporting the development of geospatial knowledge, such as its role in facilitating data visualization and supporting student's ability to think flexibly about spatial patterns and relations, are discussed. Finally, the limitations of the current research on Google Earth as a tool for supporting geospatial learning are discussed, and suggestions for future research are provided.

This study tested how prompting learners to compare their drawings to instructional visuals affects their perceived and actual performance. Undergraduates ( n = 116) created two drawings while studying a text on the human circulatory system. Then they made a series of retrospective and prospective judgments of their drawing performance and prospective judgments of their comprehension. In a subsequent restudy phase, students were randomly assigned to either compare their drawings to instructional visuals (compare group; n = 56) or to restudy the text and review their drawings without receiving instructional visuals (control group; n = 60), followed by a series of new judgments of drawing and comprehension. All students then completed drawing and comprehension post-tests. Results indicated that comparing one's drawings to instructional visuals caused students to become underconfident in the quality of their drawings (lower retrospective accuracy) and overconfident in their future drawing performance (lower prospective accuracy). Exploratory analyses indicated that the compare group tended to make surface -level (rather than conceptual) comparisons when processing the provided visuals, such as attending to the aesthetic style or conventions used in the instructional visuals. Furthermore, despite a strong link between drawing and comprehension performance, comparing drawings to instructional visuals did not significantly affect students' judgments of comprehension. These findings highlight potential drawbacks of comparing generative drawings to instructional visuals in learning by drawing.

We tested two potential ways to help students learn from feedback on their problem-solving errors in physics: (a) design the feedback to align with established principles of multimedia learning (Experiment 1), and/or (b) explicitly prompt students to generate self-explanations of their errors (Experiment 1 and 2). Experiment 1 (n = 131) found no effect of feedback design and limited effects of self-explaining: Self-explaining improved error correction and near (but not far) transfer performance for only one of the feedback conditions. In Experiment 2 (n = 110), we tested a more explicit form of self-explanation support. Students who received scaffolded self-explanation prompts generated higher quality explanations, corrected more errors, and performed better on the near (but not far) transfer test than those who received standard self-explanation prompts or a control group who received no prompts. Students receiving standard self-explanation prompts did not significantly outperform the control group. Overall, this study suggests scaffolded self-explanation prompts help students correct and avoid similar problem-solving errors in the future. © 2024 The Author(s)

This study explored why students rarely create drawings when learning from science texts despite potential learning benefits. Undergraduates (n = 114) studied a 10-part text on the human respiratory system and took notes by choosing their own strategies (free choice group) or by choosing to create a drawing or write a verbal summary (forced choice group). Other students were instructed to create drawings (draw group) or write summaries (summarize group). All students then completed a series of post-tests. The forced choice group chose to draw significantly more frequently than the free choice group; however, both groups still overwhelmingly chose summarizing. Participants across all groups reported lower prior experience, lower expectancies for success, lower perceived value, and higher perceived cost of drawing compared to summarizing. Students' prior experiences and beliefs about drawing were also associated with how frequently they chose to draw, providing implications for future instructional interventions.

This study explored how different formats of instructional visuals affect the accuracy of students' metacognitive judgments. Undergraduates (n = 133) studied a series of five biology texts and made judgments of learning. Students were assigned randomly to study the texts only (text only), study the texts with provided visuals (provided visuals group), study the texts and generate their own visuals (learner-generated visuals group), or study the texts and observe animations of instructor-generated visuals (instructor-generated visuals group). After studying the texts and making judgments of learning, all students completed multiple-choice comprehension tests on each text. The learner-generated and instructor-generated visuals groups exhibited significantly higher relative judgment accuracy than the text only and provided visuals groups, though this effect was relatively small. The learner-generated visuals group also required more study time and was more likely to report the use of visual cues when making their judgments of learning.

Errors are inevitable in most learning contexts, but under the right conditions, they can be beneficial for learning. Prior research indicates that generating and learning from errors can promote retention of knowledge, higher-level learning, and self-regulation. The present review proposes an integrated theoretical model to explain two major phases of learning from self-generated errors: the Generating Errors (GE) phase, which contributes to learning via semantically related prior knowledge activation, and the Detecting and Correcting Errors (DCE) phase, which contributes to learning via self-explanation when processing and comparing one's responses with provided reference information to promote high-quality internal feedback. Our model identifies general design principles that support each phase based on prior empirical research. We conclude by identifying research gaps and future directions regarding specific design features of the GE and DCE phases and the role of students' emotion, motivation, and individual differences in learning from errors.

External representations powerfully support and augment complex human behavior. When navigating, people often consult external representations to help them find the way to go, but do maps or verbal instructions improve spatial knowledge or support effective wayfinding? Here, we examine spatial knowledge with and without external representations in two studies where participants learn a complex virtual environment. In the first study, we asked participants to generate their own maps or verbal instructions, partway through learning. We found no evidence of improved spatial knowledge in a pointing task requiring participants to infer the direction between two targets, either on the same route or on different routes, and no differences between groups in accurately recreating a map of the target landmarks. However, as a methodological note, pointing was correlated with the accuracy of the maps that participants drew. In the second study, participants had access to an accurate map or set of verbal instructions that they could study while learning the layout of target landmarks. Again, we found no evidence of differentially improved spatial knowledge in the pointing task, although we did find that the map group could recreate a map of the target landmarks more accurately. However, overall improvement was high. There was evidence that the nature of improvement across all conditions was specific to initial navigation ability levels. Our findings add to a mixed literature on the role of external representations for navigation and suggest that more substantial intervention—more scaffolding, explicit training, enhanced visualization, perhaps with personalized sequencing—may be necessary to improve navigation ability. © 2023, The Author(s).

This study explored whether different types of instructional visuals-knowledge maps and pictorial illustrations-encourage students to focus on specific types of conceptual relationships during learning. Undergraduates (n = 134) studied a text lesson on the human nervous system accompanied by maps (text-with-maps group), illustrations (text-with-illustrations group), or no visuals (text-only group). Then all students orally explained what they learned as if they were teaching a peer. The text-with-maps group generated more hierarchical relationships than the other two groups, and both visual groups generated more temporal relationships than the text-only group. The groups did not significantly differ in the number of structural relationships generated. On a subsequent post-test, only the text-with-maps group significantly outperformed the text-only group, and the two visual groups did not significantly differ from each other. These findings highlight how different visuals affect the types of relationships students focus on when learning from the same text.