Congratulations to Dr. Jason Chan (PI) for receiving a National Science Foundation grant ($642,010) for his research titled “Improving Online Learning with Interpolated Retrieval”. This grant is in collaboration with Dr. Karl Szpunar (Co-PI) at Ryerson University, Canada.
Project Summary: Online learning represents a rapidly growing feature of post-secondary education. According to a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics, it is estimated that 1 in 7 students enroll exclusively online, and that 1 in 3 students have taken at least one online course, notwithstanding the fact that COVID-19 has forced most education online, at least temporarily. Within the context of online learning, video-recorded lectures represent the primary mode of information delivery, but learning from online lectures is often plagued by bouts of inattention that impede effective learning. This award will allow the researchers to build on their preliminary work demonstrating that breaking long lecture videos into shorter, more manageable segments, and asking students to express what they have learned during these breaks can reliably improve attention and learning. More specifically, the researchers will aim to (1) develop and evaluate a theoretical framework to better understand why it is effective to intersperse video-recorded lectures with brief quizzes, (2) test the generalizability of this behavioral intervention across multiple STEM areas and student populations, including both students who enroll in public universities and in community colleges, and (3) construct evidence-based guidelines around optimal parameters for interspersing video-recorded lectures with brief quizzes.