The role of students' interests during computer-assisted learning: A field experiment

摘要

The present paper examined the effect of adjusting learning material to the out-of-school interests of students. In particular, using a field experiment involving 1449 secondary school students in 31 Flemish schools, we evaluated the effectiveness of the instructional method "example choice" in a computer-assisted financial education program. Example choice allowed students to choose between contexts potentially more aligned with their out of-school interest, which in turn determined the backdrop examples for exercises in the computer-assisted program. Schools were randomly assigned to a control or treatment condition. While students in both the control and treatment schools received the computer-assisted program, example choice was added only to the program for students in treatment schools. Results show that example choice did not increase students' financial knowledge. Despite the well-established psychological belief that students' interest in an academic topic can be instilled by the educator or the learning environment, example choice did not affect the interest of the average student in the financial topic. Moreover, example choice even led to significant motivational deficits for students with low perceived competence.