Intervention study for assessment of the differential influence of adaptive feedback on the academic success of first-year students in general chemistry

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First-year chemistry students start college usually with different prior knowledge not least because of the open course-level choices at the end of upper secondary school. This often leads to the fact that students with little prior knowledge cannot catch up with their fellow students with higher knowledge and consequently do not achieve the minimum requirements for final examinations. The aim of the project is therefore to promote students individually – especially students with little prior knowledge – to enable them to study chemistry successfully. In the framework model of the research group the study takes up at the important predictor for academic success: the subject-specific prior knowledge. The advancement is made in a study with experimental design to investigate the suitability of the two feedback conditions. According to findings in literature it is still unclear which feedback condition is the most efficient for learners with little or rather high prior knowledge. Depending on students’ prior knowledge, the influence of an adaptive BRT-feedback algorithm compared to a non-adaptive KR-KCR-feedback algorithm on students’ content knowledge and examination results in general chemistry at the end of the first semester are investigated. Students’ conceptual content knowledge and final examination results in general chemistry are understood as central degree of students’ academic success in first semester. First-year chemistry students of the University of Duisburg-Essen will learn with interactive learning tasks, which are coupled each with one of the two feedback algorithms in this project and provided via a computer-based learning environment. The KR-KCR feedback algorithm provides information about the correctness of the solution and presents the correct answer after three unsuccessful attempts, whereas BRT-feedback algorithm helps students to identify and correct errors by providing strategically useful information on error correction without directly presenting the correct answer. To compare the effects of the two feedback conditions, the students are randomly assigned to one of two exercise groups on basis of their course-level choice in chemistry at upper secondary school. Students in group one will work with the BRT-feedback learning tasks, whereas students in group two will learn with the KR-KCR-feedback learning tasks. Before and after the intervention students’ knowledge is measured in order to investigate the influence of the two feedback conditions on students’ achievements in general chemistry. Because efficiency of feedback is decisively dependent on individual characteristics of the students and how they process feedback information, various cognitive and motivational factors are considered as control variables.