Inspiring integration in college students reading multiple biology texts
Open Access
- Author:
- Firetto, Carla Marie
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 21, 2013
- Committee Members:
- Peggy Noel Van Meter, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Stephanie L Knight, Committee Member
Hoi Kin Suen, Committee Member
Richard Cyr, Committee Member - Keywords:
- multiple texts
integration
intertextuality
task instruction
integration intervention - Abstract:
- Introductory biology courses typically present topics on related biological systems in separate chapters and lectures, and a complete foundational understanding requires that students understand how these biological systems are related. Unfortunately, spontaneous generation of these connections is rare for novice learners. These experiments focus on the potential of developing a means to enhance the connections students make between separate, but related, biological systems. In a series of three experiments, the conditions that support students’ development of connections between multiple biology texts are considered. Experiment 1 tests the possibility that students’ integration of biological systems presented in separate texts can be improved if students know that these texts should be integrated. This experiment tested two conditions; participants either received instructions to integrate between two texts or instructions to comprehend. The results from this experiment suggest that providing instructions alone is not sufficient to impact participants’ integration. In Experiment 2, participants were delivered the same instructions as Experiment 1, with an added condition that provided students with additional support encouraging a deeper understanding of the integration task. The results from Experiment 2 also offer no evidence that providing students with instructions to integrate between two systems is sufficient, even if participants understood the integration task. Experiment 3 tests the effects of providing additional support to participants for how to integrate. Three conditions compared the effects of an integration intervention (II) and a comprehension intervention (CC) to a note-taking control task (CT). Participants in the CT condition spent the greatest amount of time reading the text(s) and scored the highest on a measure of small-grain comprehension. Despite lower comprehension scores and less time-on-task, participants in the II intervention scored significantly highest on the vFRI measure of large-grain integration. Students’ self-reported strategy use indicates that the integration intervention was effective because it stimulated student engagement toward use of integration strategies.