| Abstract: | Strategies for adapting instructional support and learning incentives were applied separately and in combination to a lesson on mathematical rules. Adaptations were based on individual students' pretest scores such that the lower the score, the greater the rule support and incentive value. 105 undergraduates participated, and an additional 41 from the same course served as a norming group for the validation of measures. On dependent measures of retention and learning efficiency (posttest/time), adaptation of support improved performance significantly when compared with standard support. Incentive effects, however, were not reliable. An additional comparison strategy, which intentionally mismatched allocations of incentives and instructional support, yielded the lowest performances of all treatments. The results, overall, provide support for the "achievement–treatment interaction" hypothesis and suggest the practical advantages for adapting instructional support to students in self-managed learning systems. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
