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Assessing structure building in college classrooms at scale
Author(s) -
Soicher Raechel N.,
BeckerBlease Kathryn A.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3643
Subject(s) - construct (python library) , context (archaeology) , psychology , measure (data warehouse) , meaning (existential) , scale (ratio) , mathematics education , resource (disambiguation) , data science , computer science , data mining , computer network , psychotherapist , biology , programming language , physics , quantum mechanics , paleontology
Summary Structure building refers to the way in which people construct meaning from incoming information by creating a foundation of mental nodes, mapping incoming information to the foundational structure, and shifting to a new structure when necessary. Structure building ability has been shown to moderate learning both in laboratory‐based and classroom‐based research (e.g., use of outlines for effective note‐taking and course final grades, respectively). However, measurement of structure building can be resource intensive. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate a shortened, scalable measure of structure building (developed by a textbook publisher) in a real‐world context. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that this tool, embedded in the online ancillary materials accompanying a textbook, can be used to measure a variable that is relevant to students' learning in introductory psychology courses.