Some blog followers may be interested in a post "Re: More
Difficult to Read Text Leads to Better Retention" [Hake (2010)].
The abstract reads:
******************************************
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."]
******************************************
To access the complete 20 kB post please click on
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.
