Guided Activity Principle

Overview

The Guided Activity Principle occurs when the learners are placed in an environment where they are required to interact with the materials under guidance during the learning processes. To be distinguished from direct instruction and pure discovery, guided activity followed by ideas of interactivity and feedback. Partial instructional messages are provided to students while leaving spaces for students to be involved in the activity by dialoguing (doing experiments with given instructional materials) and manipulating (the process of asking questions and receiving answers or giving questions and receiving feedback from different perspectives.) the materials. (Moreno & Mayer, 2010) Moreno and Mayer proposed the Guided Activity Principle as a valuable technique to increase generative processing and improve learners’ academic performances by creating an interactive learning environment to encourage meaningful learning. (Moreno and Mayer, 2010)

Evidence

Thus, Moreno and Mayer put forward the guided activity principle in 2010, and many psychologists and researchers have researched the relevant topics to prove its values for decades. The guided Activity Principle is deeply intertwined with creating interactive learner-centered pedagogies for learners. For instance, Brown and Palinscar depicted that if the students were presented in an environment combining expert scaffolding, guided practice with concrete strategies, and collaborative discussion (feedback), then it could improve the comprehension of listening and reading skills of the students. (Brown, Palincsar, 1986) Instructor support, such as guidance and feedback, is necessary for learning and positively affects students’ cognitive processing (Salleh, Azman, Zahari, 2021) by reducing cognitive overload ( Sweller, 1994). Feedback can be given by any agents, including instructors, parents, peers, self, books, experience, etc. It encourages interactive learning among the students, motivation, and engagement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007) and increases levels of self-direction (Rossi, Ranieri, Li & Perifanou, 2019)

Moreno and Mayer used the experiment of the Design-A-Plant learning environment studies (Moreno, Mayer, Spires, & Lester 2001) and the experiments on the general performances of elementary students with and without verbal guidance of the subject of Mathematics as experimental groups (Moreno & Durán, 2004). According to the research, learners with different educational backgrounds were separated into three groups and given different instructional materials to create the guided activity condition. (Moreno & Mayer, 2010) Group 1 was teamed up with groups of middle school students and given some direct instructions as guided activity conditions. Group 2 was a group of college students with the guidance of direct instruction (introductions of a set of roots, stems, and leaves), instructional words, and instructional messages from an on-screen tutor. Group 3 was identical to group 2, yet they only received instructional messages from an on-screen agent and could not design the plant before explanation. Group 4 was a group of elementary school children who independently practiced the mathematic problems under the guidance of an on-screen agent.  The result turns out that the Effect sizes for the four experimental groups were 0.95, 1.20, 0.70, and 0.50, with an average effect size of 0.83, which proves the positive influences on learners’ performance under the guided activity conditions. The learners perform better when they are under instructions that simultaneously allow them to dialogue and manipulate the learning materials intended to lead learners to produce meaningful learning.  (Moreno & Mayer, 2010) However, there are not many differences regarding the effects of guided activity toward reducing extraneous load and increasing generative processing.

Design Implications

‘Perusall’ being used in the program would be a great example that followed the guided activity principle. Both the learners and the instructors can access the webpage, annotate the sentences, and review and present their own opinions on each other's comments, which encourages both interactivities of the learners and feedback from each other to encourage meaningful learning processes.

Challenges

As mentioned earlier in the evidence section, the data results of the experimental groups highlight a few effects of the guided activity on cognitive load. However, Moreno and Mayer argue that there is a possibility that the guided activity principle can reduce learners' extraneous load and increase their generative processing, which is relevant to the study of cognitive load theory and still need further research.

References

• Brown, A. L., & Palincsar, A. S. (1986). Guided, cooperative learning and individual knowledge acquisition / Ann L. Brown, Annemarie S. Palincsar. Champaign, Ill.: Cambridge, Mass.: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., 1986. PP 1- 52

• Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.3102/003465430298487

• Moreno, R., Mayer, R. E., Spires, H. A., & Lester, J. C. (2001). The Case for Social Agency in Computer-Based Teaching: Do Students Learn More Deeply When They Interact with Animated Pedagogical Agents? Cognition and Instruction, 19(2), 177–213. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3233816

• Moreno, R & Durán. (2004). Do Multiple Representations Need Explanations? The Role of Verbal Guidance and Individual Differences in Multimedia Mathematics Learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(. 3), 492–503. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1037/0022-0663.96.3.492

• Moreno, R., & Mayer, R. E. (2010). Techniques that increase generative processing in multimedia learning: Open questions for cognitive load research. In J. L. Plass, R. Moreno, & R. Brunken (Eds.), Cognitive Load Theory (pp. 153–178). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Rossi, P. G., Ranieri, M., Yan Li, & Perifanou, M. (2019). Interaction, feedback, and active learning: where we are and where we want to go. Form@re, 19(3), 1–5. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.13128/form-7696

• Salleh, S. M., Nik Azman, N. A. N., & Zahari, N. H. M. (2021). Students’ Perception on Interactive Learning in Enhancing Blended Learning Experiences. Global Business & Management Research, 13, 268–276.

• Sweller, J. (1994). Cognitive load theory, learning difficulty, and instructional design. Learning and instruction, 4(4), 295–312.