Effects of student‐generated questions as the source of online drill‐and‐practice activities on learning
British Journal of Educational Technology
Published online on April 10, 2013
Abstract
This study investigated the effects of online drill‐and‐practice activities using student‐generated questions on academic performance and motivation as compared with online drill‐and‐practice using teacher‐generated questions and no drill‐and‐practice in a student question‐generation (SQG) learning context. A quasi‐experimental research method was adopted for the purposes of this study. Six fifth‐grade classes (n = 145) participated in a weekly online activity for 5 weeks. Analysis of covariance results showed significant differences among the different treatment groups with regard to both academic performance and motivation. Post hoc comparisons using simultaneous confidence intervals, however, did not demonstrate the use of online SQG combined with answering peer‐generated questions to be more conducive to learning with regard to any of the observed variables as compared with the use of online SQG combined with answering teacher‐generated questions. Furthermore, answering student‐generated questions in addition to online SQG did not lead to added gains in learning as compared with the online SQG‐alone group. Some reasons for the unexpected findings are proposed, and the significance of this study, as well as suggestions for instructional implementations and future research, are provided.