More Difficult to Read Text Leads to Better Retention

Some blog followers may be interested in a post "Re: More

Difficult to Read Text Leads to Better Retention" [Hake (2010)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: PhysLrnR's Bill Goffe alerted subscribers to

an Economist report http://bit.ly/bfpdaB on an article

"Fortune Favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of

Disfluency on Educational Outcomes" (Oppenheimer et al.

(2010, http://bit.ly/cATcBK ).

In research conducted both in the lab and in chemistry,

physics, English, and history classrooms, Oppenheimer

et al. found that information made "disfluent" with

difficult-to-read fonts (12-point Comic Sans MS 75%

greyscale and 12-point Bodoni MT 75% greyscale) enhanced

"learning" over more fluent information in easy-to-read

16-point Arial pure-black font.

But classroom "learning" was measured by "normal

assessment tests" which usually gauge only lower-level

learning such as rote-memorization, recipe following,

and algorithmicproblem-solving.

One might wonder, for example, if, after textbook coverage

of Newtonian mechanics, there would be an increase of

posttestscores on the conceptually oriented "Force Concept

Inventory" (FCI) [Halloun & Hestenes (1992)] for text material

with more:

(a) difficult-to-read fonts,

(b) "Fog" as measured by the "Gunning Fog Index", or

(c) structural complexity [as studied by e.g., McNamara,

Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch (1996) in "Are good texts always

better? Text coherence, background knowledge,and levels of

understanding in learning from text."]

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To access the complete 20 kB post please click on

http://bit.ly/cZ9xHe

rrhake@earthlink.net>

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

"Easy reading is damned hard writing."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The single biggest problem in communication is

the illusion that it has taken place."

- George Bernard Shaw

REFERENCES

Hake, R.R. 2010. "Re: More Difficult to Read Text Leads to Better

Retention." online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at

http://bit.ly/cZ9xHe. Post of 27 Oct 2010 17:14:33-0700 to

AERA-L, Net-Gold, and PhysLrnR. The abstract and link to the

complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.