Importantly, students engaged with the same problems in each of the two conditions. What differed was whether they practiced solving all of the problems, or practiced solving some problems and engaged with error correction and explanation for the others.
The researchers measured students’ learning through post-tests administered immediately after the two learning conditions were completed and one week later.
There were some other aspects of the procedure as well, and more specific details can be found in the paper. For example, the students completed a pre-test to assess their prior knowledge, answered questions about how they thought the learning activies went (e.g., how much they liked it, ease of interacting on the computer), and answered questions about how accurate they thought they were during the post-test.
The Results:
There were no differences between the two groups on the immediate post-test. However, on the one-week delayed post-test, the students in the erroneous examples condition performed better than the students in the problem-solving condition.
(Note, these results were statistically controlled for prior knowledge as assessed by the researchers, and so they represent increases in learning due to the intervention. If you’re interested or a stats person, check out the paper for more details.)
Importantly, when the researchers looked at students who had lower and higher levels of prior knowledge, the erroneous examples condition consistently led to better performance on the delayed post-test compared to the problem-solving condition. This is good news, because it means this learning method tends to work for students at varying levels of ability, and not just students at one end of the spectrum.
Students in the erroneous examples condition were also more accurate at judging how well they were performing during the post-tests.
However, students in the erroneous examples condition reported liking the lesson less than the students in the problem-solving condition. Unfortunately, another situation where the strategy that students tend to like more is the one that helps them learn less!
References:
(1) Adams, D. M., McLaren, B. M., Durkin, K., Mayer, R. E., Rittle-Johnson, B., Isotani, S., & van Velsen, M. (2014). Using erroneous examples to improve mathematics learning with a web-based tutoring system. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 401-411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.053
