Generative learning strategy use and self-regulatory prompting in digital text

Abstract

The digital revolution is shifting print-based textbooks to digital text, and it has afforded the op-portunity to incorporate meaningful learning strategies and otherwise separate metacognitive ac-tivities directly into these texts as embedded support. A sample of 89 undergraduates read a digi-tal, expository text on the basics of photography. The treatment prompted the reader with self-regulatory questions and embedded a generative strategy, paraphrasing, and confirmed previous research on the relationships between prior knowledge and level of self-regulation on reading comprehension. A one-way between subjects ANOVA revealed significance for the level of self-regulation on comprehension-level items and for the level of prior knowledge on recall-level items. ANOVA also indicated that the quality of paraphrasing has a significant impact on recall-level and overall performance on the posttest. Further, participants were generally positive towards the instruc-tional materials, which suggests willingness, and in some cases, preference, to reading in a digital format while experiencing embedded, metacognitive instructional interventions. It is recom-mended that comprehension may be enhanced by providing deeper training on the use of the gen-erative strategy and by increasing motivation prior to interacting with the text in order to capital-ize on the unique advantages of digital materials.