Primary Research Interests
Learning tasks encourage learners to engage in cognitive processes, which they would not accomplish spontaneously. Interactive learning task therefore support learners in terms of knowledge acquistion and motivation.With the help of a design-based-research-approach we conceive, implement and evaluate interactive learning tasks for different instructional situations. It is the goal to be able to theoretically explain conditions and effects of different learning tasks better than before, and to derive implications for designing such tasks for practical use.
Task culture is the way in which teachers and learners handle tasks. The vision of a new task culture ascribces tasks a central role for cognitive activation and autonomy by promoting training and development.
The department’s main research emphasis pertain to the requirements, success factors and effects of a new task culture, in which tasks are used as the key for treating diversity and heterogenity of learning groups.
Learning without thought is equivalent to laboring in vain; thought without learning is perilous. (Confucius)
Learners are supposed to not only repeat what they have learned, but also to flexibly apply their knowledge in new situations. Instructions that promote generative learning activites provide good opportunites to accomplish this. In generative learning activites, learners actively make connections between informations from learning materials or between these informations and their previous knowledge. The department analyzes conditions and effects of generative learning activites in different learning and instructional situations.
Feedback is one of the most central components of learning, instruction and working processes. Especially the so called ITF (informative tutorial feedback) is researched at the department. ITF provides learners with information for error correction or for overcoming obstacles in the learning process, without directly providing a solution.
How can teachers design competence-based feedback? How does feedback affect learners? Which implementation and design features of feedback promote and support learning processes. How can learners be supported in making use of feedback? The professionalization of instructors as feedback designers is an important task in educating future teachers. Instructors need to be able to design feedback in a competence oriented and interactive way. Learners are feedback users and have to be supported in the meaningful use of feedback.
For long time mistakes in learning processes have been considered as a source of disturbance, whose presence should be avoided, or at least corrected early on. But during the last years a productive dealing with mistakes foregrounds more and more in research. A possibilty to integrate learning from other people’s mistakes is the purposeful integration of typical mistakes in learning tasks. Such an approach is pursued with the concept of tasks-with-typical-errors.
How will I score in the upcoming examination? Am I sure that my answer is correct? Questions like this concern the evaluation of one’s own status of learning and help us to autonomously regulate our learning behaviour based on internal feedback. In the field of metacognition research we concentrate on the promotion of the accuracy of such self-assessments.
21st century information technology has opened new grounds for learning and instruction, while simultaneously presenting numerous challenges to designers and users of information technology learning offers. Within the frame of different research projects, questions of innovative instructional design with help of modern information technolgy are in the center of research interest.
Motivational factors significantly influence whether learners engage with a learning task, which tasks and activities they choose to engage with, and how intensively and persistent they perform their learning activities. A central research interest of the department is thus to contribute to the clarification of following research questions: In which way do instructional measures work promoting or inhibiting on learning motivation? How do instructional measures work depending on individual motivational conditions? How can learning environments be designed conducively? How can motivational conditions and variations be measured?
An Overview of tools (co)developed by the Chair of Psychology of Learning and Instruction you can find on Digital Tools for Smart Learning and Instruction.