Students Learn More with Less Text that Covers the Same Core Topics Frank Vahid 1,3, Alex Edgcomb...

Students Learn More with Less Text that Covers the Same Core Topics

Frank Vahid1,3, Alex Edgcomb1,3, and Roman Lysecky2,3

1Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Univ. of California, Riverside2Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Univ. of Arizona

3Also with zyBooks.comCopyright © 2015 Frank Vahid and Alex Edgcomb, UC Riverside. 1 of 9

Design adage

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1939

Copyright © 2015 Frank Vahid and Alex Edgcomb, UC Riverside. 2 of 9

Perfection when nothing to take away

1960 1980 2000 2010 20200

2000400060008000

10000120001400016000

f(x) = 85.0595044 exp( 1.11285885 x )R² = 0.914242867532233

Annual cost of healthcare per person

Annual cost of healthcare per person

Exponential (Annual cost of healthcare per person)

Year

U.S

. Dol

lars


1960 1980 2000 2010 20200

5000

10000

15000

Annual cost of healthcare / person

Year

$ U

.S.

Normal text vs. minimal text


Reactions

Minimizing text

• IS NOT watering down / lowering standards– IS conveying same ideas with minimal words/letters.

Reducing is hard• Methods– Avoid extra words / phrases– Declarative sentences, subject/verb/object

• Before: There is another method that is also very helpful when searching for items on the web, namely the method of using quotes.

• After: Quotes also help during search.

– Move text to tables when appropriate– (And use animations / learning questions / etc. – other work)

Text on same topic


Experiment setup• Text styles:– Normal: 1,255 words– Minimal: 211 words

• Study:1. Pre-quiz2. Lesson (random text style; same topic)

3. Post-quiz4. Survey

• Participants: 168 CS0 students


Results


Pre-lesson Post-lesson Improvement0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

4.0

5.1

1.1

4.1

6.5

2.4

Normal text

Minimal text

Scor

e

(Max)

Normal text Minimal text p-value

Lesson was right length 3.8 4.8 < 0.001

Liked writing style 3.0 4.3 0.03

Students preferredminimal text

p-value < 0.001

Web: Rethink conveying

• Traditional: Text and figures

• Web: Animations, learning questions, tinker tools, simulators, much more, text, and figures


Conclusion


• Students learned more with less text than normal text • Building web-native, interactive textbooks [1]

Digital DesignComputing Technology for All Material and Energy and Balances

[1] zyBooks. www.zybooks.com. Oct. 2015.

We are grateful for support of this research by the NSF and Google.

Students Learn More with Less Text that Covers the Same Core Topics Frank Vahid 1,3, Alex Edgcomb...

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