Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We compared students’ exam performance following one oftwo different types of active learning assignments. In oneversion students read text describing experimental evidence forthe principle being studied. In the other version, studentsinstead created a hypothesis and explanation, and then studiedand explained the results. The content was matched acrossconditions. Students performed better in exams requiringgeneralization to novel situations, after providing hypothesesand explanations than after reading the text and answeringquestions about it. These results suggest that prediction andexplanation cycles might be a better active learning approachto promote generalization and transfer than practice questions.