Assessing structure building in college classrooms at scale

Summary Structure building refers to the way in which people construct meaning from incoming information by creating a foundation of mental nodes, mapping incoming information to the foundational structure, and shifting to a new structure when necessary. Structure building ability has been shown to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied cognitive psychology 2020-05, Vol.34 (3), p.747-753
Main Authors: Soicher, Raechel N., Becker‐Blease, Kathryn A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Classrooms
Cognitive Mapping
Cognitive Processes
College Students
Electronic publishing
higher education
Information Sources
Instructional Materials
Introductory Courses
Learning Processes
Mapping
Meaning
Measurement
Measurement Techniques
Psychology
Publishing Industry
reader ability
structure building
Textbooks
translational science
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Summary:Summary Structure building refers to the way in which people construct meaning from incoming information by creating a foundation of mental nodes, mapping incoming information to the foundational structure, and shifting to a new structure when necessary. Structure building ability has been shown to moderate learning both in laboratory‐based and classroom‐based research (e.g., use of outlines for effective note‐taking and course final grades, respectively). However, measurement of structure building can be resource intensive. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate a shortened, scalable measure of structure building (developed by a textbook publisher) in a real‐world context. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that this tool, embedded in the online ancillary materials accompanying a textbook, can be used to measure a variable that is relevant to students' learning in introductory psychology courses.
ISSN:0888-4080
1099-0720
DOI:10.1002/acp.3643