Richard Staley

State University of New York College at Oneonta | SUNY Oneonta · Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling and Special Education

Previous experiments have shown a deleterious effect of visual representations on college students’ ability to solve total- and joint-probability word problems. The present experiments used conditional-probability problems, known to be more difficult than total- and joint-probability problems. The diagram group was instructed in how to use tree dia...

This article presents the findings of two experimental studies designed to investigate the use of different kinds of visual representations of mathematical relationships in helping college students solve probability word problems. Two types of multiple-event probability problems were presented: joint probability of independent events; and total pro...

Previous research has cast doubt on the efficacy of utilizing external representations as an aid to solving word problems. The present study replicates previous findings that concrete representations hinder college students' ability to solve probability word problems, and extends those findings to apply to a multimedia instructional context. Our co...

We replicated the general results of two previous experiments showing that external representations hinder college students' ability to solve probability word problems. In the present experiment, we converted our training and a portion of our practice materials to a multimedia format. The concrete-representations group was instructed in how to use...

Demographic variables, findings from the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw & Dennison, 1994), the Learning Strategies Survey (Kardash & Amlund, 1991), and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1991), as well as accuracy ratings of test performance, were examined in 2 studies. Findings ind...

Research has shown that it is effective to combine example study and problem solving in the initial acquisition of cognitive skills. Present methods for combining these learning modes are static, however, and do not support a transition from example study in early stages of skill acquisition to later problem solving. Against this background, the au...

Three experiments compared the learning potential of text versus outline and matrix displays. In Experiments 1 and 2, college students read or heard a passage about fish and then studied the text, an outline, or a matrix. In Experiment 3, students heard a passage about wildcats, and then studied text, outline, or matrix displays. In all experiments...

While past research has reported moderate effects of learning-to-learn courses on grade-point averages (GPAs), number of hours completed, and attrition rates, little has been reported about how students fare in subsequent semesters. This study, which consisted of a five-phase interview process with 30 randomly selected male and female college stude...

In this paper, we describe an undergraduate educational psychology course that utilizes self-regulated learning as the organizing principle. The course aims to facilitate students' development in self-regulated learning and to promote students' understanding of how to embed instruction for self-regulated learning strategies into classroom teaching....

The present study tested four predictions concerning the effects of instructional objectives as an adjunct aid in learning through the lecture method. First, the inclusion of objectives with the lecture was postulated to result in greater learning from the lecture. Second, objectives presentation by subsets was predicted to facilitate performance m...

We investigated the use of two different kinds of mathematical representations in helping college students solve probability word problems. Two types of multiple-event probability problems were presented: joint probability of independent events (with replacement) and total probability of non-mutually-exclusive events. The specific-representations g...