Enhancing academic performance in distance education with concept mapping and inserted uestions

Abstract

This research was designed to investigate the relative strength of two instructional strategies — inserted questions and concept mapping — for enhancing the academic performance of distance learners. The sample for this field experiment comprised one hundred and forty‐one nursing students enrolled in a 20‐week distance education course. A significant difference was found in favour of subjects who completed at least 11 of 12 concept mapping exercises. These subjects also indicated a preference for visual and graphic learning techniques. Inserted questions with explicit corrective feedback outperformed questions without such feedback.