Cooperative procedural learning: the effects of planning and prompting activities

Abstract

The present study explored the effects of a variety of cooperative learning strategy manipulations on the enactment and recall of a medical procedure. The general goal was to identify activities which would facilitate the transition from instructional text to procedural enactment. One-hundred and twenty-three participants from undergraduate classes at Texas Christian University completed all 3 sessions of the experiment. The sessions included an individual difference data collection session (1 hour), a training session (2 hours) and a test session (2 hours) which occurred five days after the training session. Training and test performances videotaped for subsequent analysis. During the training session, all the participants were randomly assigned to a dyad in one of four experimental conditions: (1) no-strategy; (2) baseline strategy; (3) prompting strategy and (4) planning strategy. The baseline strategy required the partners to alternate between performing and observing. The planning and prompting strategy groups used variations of the baseline strategy. Performers in the planning group, planned aloud how they would perform the procedure prior to enacting it. Performers in the baseline and planning groups were not allowed to refer to the instructions or to their partners, whereas performers in the prompting group were. Apart from having access to available prompts, the prompting group employed the baseline strategy. Dyads in the no-strategy condition were not given instructions about how to proceed or interact. During testing, participants performed the procedure alone, and completed a written recall test. The order of testing was counterbalanced within dyad. Analyses of the training videotapes indicated that the strategy manipulations were successful. The results indicated that written recall of the procedure in all the groups was enhanced by a prior performance. Procedure performance was facilitated in the no-strategy and prompting groups by a prior recall but not in the baseline and planning groups. The planning group recalled more of the "conditions" of the procedure than the other groups. Vocabulary level was more important for recall than performance. Field independent and field dependent participants performed best in the planning and prompting strategy groups respectively. Implications for the development of procedure learning strategies and for the distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge are discussed.