The Effects Of Learning Strategies,the Complexity Of Material And Reinforcement Measures On Learning

Modern educational concept advocates efficient and autonomous learning model,how to improve learners’ learning efficiency in the process of autonomous learning naturally becomes the core content of educational reform.Learning strategies are conducive to the improvement of learning achievement and learning efficiency,so contemporary education attaches great importance to the application of these learning strategies.Summarizing the main points strategy is an elaborative strategy that is often used in education and teaching,and it can effectively promote learning,improve learners’ long-term memory.Retrieval practice strategy is another learning strategy that educators and researchers pay more attention to in recent years.The study points out that it can also improve learners’ long-term memory and enhance their learning effect.But its role is always underestimated and often used as a tool for assessing academic performance,so we tested the learning effectiveness of retrieval practice in relation to summarizing the main points by including retrieval practice in a test.According to cognitive load theory,the complexity of materials is the only factor that affects the intrinsic cognitive load when the level of the learner’s prior knowledge level remains the same.How much the element interactivity is determines the amount of cognitive resources they occupy.Reinforcement measures,such as feedback and external rewards,can stimulate learners’ learning motivation,lead them to increase their cognitive efforts,increase the germane cognitive load,and thus increase the constructive cognitive resources in task processing.Previous studies have examined the effects of complex materials or feedback on the advantage effects of retrieval practice strategy,but it is not clear how two learning strategies summarizing the main points strategy and retrieval practice strategy,the complexity of materials and giving reinforcement measures or not interact to affect learners’ learning effects.From a theoretical point of view,the answer to this question is conducive to further study of learning strategies,the complexity of materials and reinforcement measures on the mechanism of learning effects.From a practical point of view,it is helpful for educators to guide learners to adopt different learning strategies according to thecomplexity of learning materials,and to give different reinforcement measures in order to improve learning efficiency.This study takes junior middle school students as the participants,and answers the above question through two experiments.In experiment 1,the effects of two learning strategies,summarizing the main points and retrieval practice,the complexity of materials and feedback on learning were investigated.In experiment 2,the effects of two learning strategies,summarizing the main points and retrieval practice,the complexity of materials and external rewards on the learning were investigated.The conclusions of this study are as follows:1 For short time memory retention,compared with the baseline conditions,no matter whether the learning material is a complex material or a simple material,both summarizing the main points strategy and retrieval practice strategy can promote learning.2 For long time memory retention,summarizing the main points strategy can promote the learning of complex materials better than retrieval practice strategy.3 For the junior middle school students,external rewards and the two strategies of summarizing the main points and retrieval practice can promote the learning of simple materials for a long time.