A Review of Research and a Meta-analysis of the Seductive Details Effect

• Periodical List
• CBE Life Sci Educ
• v.xviii(iii); Autumn 2019
• PMC6755318

CBE Life Sci Educ. 2019 Fall; 18(3): ar42.

Seductive Details in the Flipped Classroom: The Impact of Interesting simply Educationally Irrelevant Information on Pupil Learning and Motivation

Jeffrey Maloy

^†Department of Life Sciences Core Didactics, Academy of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Laura Fries

^‡Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Frank Laski

^†Department of Life Sciences Cadre Pedagogy, Academy of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095

^§Section of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biological science, Academy of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Gerardo Ramirez

^∥Department of Educational Psychology, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306

Daron Barnard, Monitoring Editor

Received 2019 Jan ix; Revised 2019 April 29; Accustomed 2019 May six.

Abstruse

In this study, we assessed the impact of providing students with short video clips highlighting the relevance of fabric they are learning in the genetics classroom to their everyday lives. These interesting merely non–learning objective oriented clips, referred to as "seductive details," have been studied extensively in laboratory contexts. In laboratory studies, seductive details have been shown to actually decrease learning, leading some to recommend that whatsoever information non directly pertaining to academic learning outcomes be removed from instruction materials. Nosotros aimed to uncover furnishings of seductive details in an actual college course, in a way divorced from the misreckoning variation introduced by teacher-level differences in personality and lecture styles. Our results show that, in a flipped-classroom surround, seductive details practice non harm students' content attainment, interest, or perceived learning, only they are memorable. Students with high background cognition of genetics reported greater learning after watching videos containing seductive details than students who watched equivalent videos without seductive details, merely there was no divergence in quiz scores between the groups. These results contradict some of the major furnishings observed throughout decades of studies conducted in artificial psychology laboratory environments and highlight possible affective benefits of instructors using seductive details.

INTRODUCTION

A core challenge of undergraduate science, technology, technology, and mathematics (Stalk) teaching in the United States is retention of historically marginalized students in STEM majors (President'southward Quango of Advisors on Scientific discipline and Engineering, 2012 ; Hughes, 2018 ). For example, underrepresented minority (URM) and starting time-generation students who begin equally Stem majors are much more likely to change majors than non-URM/first-generation students in Stalk majors or URM/first-generation students in humanities and social sciences fields (Sork et al., 2015 ). At that place are institutional (eastward.grand., availability of advising and mentoring programs), cognitive (e.g., background knowledge), and motivational (e.g., interest, self-efficacy, and perceived relevance of course material) factors that explain function of the story for the high dropout rate in Stem (Cromley et al., 2016 ). Merely strategies to retain underrepresented students are non yet fully coming together this challenge. In this report, we ask whether momentary enhancements of science material, using seductive details during lectures, tin can ameliorate course outcomes for URM and commencement-generation students.

Improving Interest in Stem

Perhaps intuitively, many instructors recognize the significance of student interest, and they are taught to develop ways to heighten this psychological land of focused attention, persistence, and date. This recommendation is empirically founded, as inquiry demonstrates that college domain interest is associated with greater attending, chore persistence, and endeavour (Ainley et al., 2002 ; Hidi and Renninger, 2006 ). Students' domain involvement equally first-twelvemonth college students even predicts major retentiveness, grades, and course taking 7 years later on (Harackiewicz et al., 2008 ). Of course, promoting domain interest is the finish goal of a long and complicated process.

For most students, the involvement that they have for a domain begins with instructors attempting to promote situational interest. Education theorists like John Dewey have long taught the importance of communicable and property involvement (Dewey, 1913 ). More than recently, the 4-phase model for interest development argues that repeated situations that take hold of a pupil's interest can, over time, develop into a more than indelible disposition by promoting engagement with target content (Hidi and Renninger, 2006 ). Hence, contemporary theories for enhancing interest place a high premium on external supports that deliberately scaffold pupil interest throughout a lesson, particularly for content that students may find initially less interesting.

There exist a diverseness of context-specific approaches for promoting situational involvement. For example, instructors can vary the novelty and complexity of the content to lucifer students' background knowledge and interests (Berlyne, 1970 ); present students with content-relevant images that create surprise or awe (Arcand et al., 2010 ; Stahl and Feigenson, 2015 ; Valdesolo et al., 2017 ); apply problem-based learning with authentic dilemmas (Belland et al., 2013 ); provide context rendering content useful to students' daily lives (i.e., utility value; Eccles et al., 1983 ); and contain hands-on activities, group work, and active-learning techniques (Palmer, 2009 ; Freeman et al., 2014 ). A widely implemented technique involves the utilize of seductive details: engaging and concrete data that is tangential to the learning objectives of a lesson. In the current written report, we explore the issue of seductive details on motivation and achievement in a flipped STEM classroom.

The Paradox of Seductive Details in Classroom Instruction

Seductive details may consist of the use of humor in the classroom, non sequitur images, memes, or other references and anecdotes that loosely connect grade material to culturally relevant or otherwise interesting topics (Downs et al., 1988 ; Cooper et al., 2018 ). The goal of using seductive details is non to present content in an interesting manner, but rather to supplement content with alluring data that is superficially relevant to the lesson content. Instructors ofttimes view seductive details as a mode to assistance bring attention dorsum to content, particularly for lesson segments that students notice uninteresting or highly abstract. For case, when discussing the lac operon equally an example of the regulation of cistron expression in bacteria, an teacher might stray briefly from activities directly relevant to the learning outcomes (due east.g., "Draw how the lac repressor and catabolite repressor poly peptide regulate expression of the lac operon") to capture students' interest with the post-obit story:

One real-world awarding of the lac operon is its importance to a favorite snack: yogurt! Without the lac operon, bacteria wouldn't be able to plow milk into yogurt. Long ago, ancient people probably stumbled upon yogurt by blow: it'due south what happened when they left milk out in warm weather. Y'all probably wouldn't want to potable sun-warmed milk, but some brave human tried it and discovered what many people dearest today: the milk ferments into a rich tangy yogurt. History even says that Ghenghis Khan sustained himself and his armies on yogurt made from the milk of their horses as they were off acquisition civilizations and spreading their empire.

Additional examples of seductive details that may appear in a biology classroom tin be plant in Supplemental Tabular array S1.

To exist certain, the utilise of seductive details is something that instructors and students ordinarily retrieve enhances instruction (Yue and Bjork, 2017 ), which explains why their utilize is commonplace (Mayer et al., 2008 ). Yet their effectiveness has been studied extensively in laboratory contexts. Surprisingly, a multifariousness of laboratory studies propose that, when seductive details are used, their inclusion does promote involvement but can actually reduce learning equally measured by recall operation and knowledge transfer performance (Harp and Mayer, 1998 ; Rey, 2012 ). In a typical laboratory experiment, participants are presented with expository text passages or learning modules in which the seductive details (in the grade of captions, pictures, or both) are either included in or excluded from the content. One recent meta-analysis concluded that the utilise of seductive details in laboratory settings is associated with a pocket-size to medium negative issue size (Rey, 2012 ).

The fact that laboratory evidence reveals that the use of seductive details reduces learning has led to the recommendation that any information not straight pertaining to academic learning outcomes be removed from instruction materials (Harp and Mayer, 1998 ; Harp and Maslich, 2005 ). However, more than recent work reveals seductive details can actually aid learning when the instructional context creates a depression cerebral load for students (Park et al., 2011 , 2015a ). Additionally, another report demonstrated that, when the laboratory setting is contradistinct to look more like a existent-world classroom setting by increasing the stakes of learning, the negative effect of seductive details was abrogated, leading to either similar or enhanced learning outcomes for students provided with seductive details compared with those non provided with seductive details (Fries et al., 2019 ). These observations led u.s. to question the pertinence of previous lab studies to the more nuanced longitudinal experience of students in the STEM classroom.

Additionally, though laboratory studies are useful for gaining insight into instructional strategies that touch specific student outcomes in highly controlled environments, these studies sometimes fail to replicate their effects when applied to actual classroom environments (Mitchell, 2012 ). This shortcoming likely stems at least in role from the increased complexity of a classroom surround compared with the advisedly controlled environment of a psychology lab. Determining whether a specific educational intervention is effective in the classroom requires testing in a big group of students across many classes, and often with multiple independent instructors. Considering of the inherent heterogeneity introduced by this requirement for rigor in classroom studies, it can be difficult or impossible to maintain the same level of control and consistency afforded by laboratory studies on educational interventions.

Use of Seductive Details in a Flipped Classroom Environs

The by decade has seen a rapid expansion in the use of blended learning models that combine digital media with classroom instruction for Stalk students (Johnson et al., 2015 ). The utilize of completely or partially online learning modules is thought to confer diverse benefits to students, including increased accessibility, decreased textbook costs, and enhanced academic outcomes (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004 ; Arfield et al., 2013 ; Sarıtepeci and Çakır, 2015 ). Additionally, digital media modules blended with confront-to-face up classroom teaching provide an intriguing tool to education researchers in the form of a highly controlled video platform in which to examination educational interventions that have been difficult to examine in traditional classrooms. For this reason, the potential of video modules in education research has been compared with the apply of wind tunnels in the development of the airplane: much like the current of air tunnel allows for the rapid, controlled testing of various aircraft designs, video learning modules provide an opportunity to test a number of promising educational interventions in large groups of students across multiple classes and instructors using a consistent and controlled delivery platform (Stigler and Givvin, 2017 ).

In this study, we aimed to uncover the effect of including seductive details in an undergraduate genetics grade in a manner divorced from the inevitable confounding variation introduced past teacher-level differences in personality and lecture styles. If previous laboratory results apply in the context of a classroom, then we should expect that the inclusion of seductive details in video lectures will increase involvement simply ultimately distract educatee attention and impairment learning. Withal, if professors' anecdotal accounts of the benefits of seductive details more accurately represent the affect of such details on student learning in a classroom environment, then we should expect that the inclusion of seductive details will improve classroom learning as measured past cease-of-video quizzes. In line with anecdotal accounts from educators and contempo literature in this area (Chips et al., 2019 ), we surmised that the inclusion of seductive details would generally exist beneficial for improving actual performance as well as perceived learning.

We likewise examined whether the inclusion of seductive details could raise situational interest in the cloth and ameliorate students' perceptions of the content utility value. Recent intervention enquiry out of the field of psychology finds that relatively small-scale changes in instruction can result in significant increases in students' interest in and perceived relevance of class material (Harackiewicz et al., 2016 ; Casad et al., 2018 ). For example, even briefly mentioning some of the possible utility of math techniques led to an enhancement in classroom functioning (Hulleman et al., 2010 ).

Both involvement and perceived relevance take been shown to correlate to each other also as with performance and retention in STEM majors (Zusho et al., 2003 ; Hurtado et al., 2010 ). Furthermore, interventions targeting interest and perceived relevance have produced promising results, demonstrating an improvement in course performance and brusque-term retention for low socioeconomic status, offset-generation, and URM students specifically in the life sciences (Hulleman et al., 2010 ). In brief, we attempted to systematically examine whether the use of seductive details tin change both performance and proximal motivational predictors of Stem learning and participation.

METHODS

Groupings

In 2 big undergraduate genetics courses (Due north = 754), students were randomized into two groups using a between-subjects pattern. Demographics of these randomized groups are shown in Table 1. The control grouping received standard lecture videos for the entirety of the study, with no seductive details presented. The handling group (who were presented with seductive details) received videos with equivalent genetics information plus brusk seductive detail video segments interspersed throughout the videos. A total of ii clips with seductive item, each averaging around one minute in length, were included in the video lecture fabric for the seductive detail group for each class session. These seductive item clips were presented for each lecture through the first four weeks of the course (until the outset midterm). In total, for the duration of the intervention, the control grouping received 7 hours and 41 minutes of lecture videos, and the experimental group received vii hours and 58 minutes of lecture videos. For both groups, preclass lecture videos consisted of between one and four videos averaging 23 minutes in length for a full of 20 preclass lecture videos. This chunking of lecture videos into shorter clips ensured that all students paused occasionally while watching preclass videos.

Tabular array 1.

Demographics of control and experimental groups^a

	SeD group
Variable	Control	SeD	Total
Gender, n (%)
Male	114 (29.three)	123 (33.7)	237 (31.four)
Female	274 (70.iv)	240 (65.8)	514 (68.two)
Other	i (0.3)	2 (0.five)	3 (0.4)
URM condition, n (%)
Non-URM	309 (79.4)	294 (eighty.5)	603 (80.0)
URM	80 (20.6)	71 (19.v)	151 (20.0)
First-generation status, n (%)
Non–first generation	238 (61.2)	217 (59.5)	455 (60.three)
Beginning generation	147 (37.eight)	141 (38.6)	288 (38.2)
Prior knowledge, northward (%)
Low	238 (61.two)	216 (59.2)	454 (threescore.two)
High	151 (38.viii)	149 (40.8)	300 (39.viii)

Seductive Details

To assess the impact of seductive details on educatee motivation and learning, nosotros recorded a series of video clips containing seductive details about comparatively dry genetics concepts and interspersed these seductive detail clips into required video lectures that students were tasked with watching before grade. These details were designed to be highly interesting, but irrelevant to the prescribed learning outcomes of the class. For instance, during a unit on Drosophila genetics, we presented students in the seductive details condition with an anecdote about how fruit flies (Drosophila) that are rejected by potential mating partners increment their consumption of alcohol. The clip was just intended to catch the interest of students and does not actually teach anything relevant to class learning outcomes almost Drosophila genetics. A complete listing of seductive details provided to students in video lectures is provided in Supplemental Tabular array S1. These video clips were presented equally visually abrupt interruptions to the normal video lecture content, with a change in the video background and text indicating the beginning of "Genetics Applied Around United states of america" segments (Supplemental Figure S1). At the get-go of the first video lecture assigned for the course, students were told that these segments narrated by a different instructor than the primary form instructor were just for the students' interest and that students would not be required to recall any of the information in the clips for the course.

Video Surveys and Quizzes

Earlier each grade session, students were required to watch two to four preclass videos totaling approximately 45 minutes of content delivery fourth dimension. After watching these videos, students were asked to fill out a survey nigh their experiences watching the videos. Each survey included items asking students to signal their interest in the video and the perceived relevance of the material presented in the video to their own lives. The surveys too asked students to charge per unit on a calibration of 1–10 how much they thought they had learned from the videos. Students were also given the pick to respond to open-ended questions regarding their favorite parts of the videos and the content that they felt they were most likely to remember at a much later engagement.

After taking the video surveys, students were required to complete a preclass video quiz pertaining to the material presented in these videos. Preclass video quizzes consisted of four questions each for a total possible score of two points, with grades assigned based on accuracy. These quizzes asked students to apply knowledge and problem-solving strategies from video lessons to solve new genetics problems. Of the questions asked in video quizzes during the intervention period, 92% were categorized as "apply"-level questions according to Flower et al.'s (1956) taxonomy, with the residual classified equally "recall"-level questions. Examples of video quiz questions can be found in Supplemental Tabular array S2. Video quizzes totaled thirty points out of 500 possible grade points. Due to the nature of online video quizzes and a course policy assuasive quiz retakes, there is no style to ascertain whether students were sharing answers or completing the quizzes independently.

Pre- and Postcourse Surveys

Students were asked to participate in precourse, postintervention, and postcourse surveys. Items on these surveys were designed to assess student interest in genetics (Hulleman and Harackiewicz, 2009 ), utility value associated with genetics (Hulleman and Harackiewicz, 2009 ; Canning and Harackiewicz, 2015 ), and preferences for video lessons that include "merely the facts" versus lessons that as well include interesting, simply irrelevant anecdotes. In the precourse survey, students were besides asked to self-report their prior cognition pertaining to viii course learning objectives aligned with the weeks in which the intervention was carried out (Tabular array ii). Students were split into low and loftier prior noesis groups based on a median separate, with a total of 39.8% of students described as having a loftier level of prior groundwork knowledge of the material covered in the genetics form.

Tabular array 2.

Survey items used to appraise self-reported prior knowledge^a

	Mean	SeD	Item-total correlation
I tin calculate the probability that an individual in a full-blooded has a item genotype.	2.75	i.18	0.55
I tin discuss how various factors might influence the relationship between genotype and phenotype.	2.87	1.04	0.62
I can explain how independent assortment of alleles during meiosis can lead to new combinations of alleles of unlinked genes.	2.67	ane.15	0.61
I can explain how genetic distance is different from physical distance.	two.15	1.16	0.55
I can calculate factor linkage and genetic map distances and interference from the frequencies of progeny with recombinant phenotypes from 2-factor and 3-cistron genetic crosses.	1.56	0.86	0.64
I tin can discuss Beadle and Tatum'southward "One cistron–ane enzyme" hypothesis.	ii.xi	1.38	0.35
I can design a screen for isolating antibiotic resistance mutants and auxotrophic revertants.	1.50	0.925	0.62
I tin can pattern a bacteriophage cross that will allow the calculation of genetic map distance between two genes.	1.34	0.77	0.59

Data Assay

Statistics analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics. For all hypothesis tests performed in this report, a p value of 0.05 was considered to be the threshold for statistical significance. Betwixt-group comparisons were performed using 2-tailed contained-sample t tests. Effect sizes were calculated using partial eta-squared. A chi-square test of linear-past-linear association was performed to determine whether differences existed in seductive detail recall between prior knowledge groups. Violin plots were made using BoxPlotR (Spitzer et al., 2014 ). Other graphs and images were made using Microsoft Excel and ggplot2 in R.

RESULTS

Seductive Details Do Non Touch on Learning or Motivation Overall

Given the wealth of previous psychology laboratory data suggesting the detrimental effects of seductive details on student learning, nosotros anticipated that the inclusion of seductive details might subtract quiz scores while increasing pupil involvement and perceived relevance of the course material. However, nosotros discover that the inclusion of seductive details had no aggregate upshot on any of these measures. Video quiz scores were high and statistically the same in both groups, with an average of 1.67 ± 0.27 (SD) points in the control group and 1.68 ± 0.28 (SD) in the seductive item grouping (Figure 1A). Students in the seductive detail group scored slightly college on quiz vii, but the issue size was minimal and non observed with other quizzes. Similarly, pupil perception of video content was similar between groups, with no divergence observed in self-rated interest, perceived relevance of video content, and perceived learning from the videos (all p > 0.05; see Effigy 1, B and C).

(A) Violin plots of reported interest in video lectures and perceived relevance of video lecture textile to students' lives or future plans. White circles show the medians; box limits bespeak the 25th and 75th percentiles as determined by R software; whiskers extend ane.v times the interquartile range from the 25th and 75th percentiles; polygons represent density estimates of data and extend to extreme values. (B) Violin plots of average self-reported perceptions of learning from video lectures. (C) Average video quiz scores for each lesson. Dots point mean score for each quiz; whiskers signal the 95% confidence interval. n = 353, 346, 359, 356, 360, 362, 365, 359, 357, 355, 360, 360, 364, 352, 349, 353 sample points. Significant differences (p < 0.05) are denoted with an asterisk. SeD, seductive details. *, p = 0.004.

Earlier the commencement of this report, participants were asked to what extent they preferred lessons to include "only the facts" versus also including interesting, merely irrelevant anecdotes. Responses to this detail were split fairly evenly, with 54.5% of students indicating a moderate to strong preference for seductive details versus 43.3% of students indicating a moderate to strong preference for lessons without seductive details (Figure 2A). Very few (2.2%) students indicated no preference, suggesting to us that the presence of seductive details can be highly polarizing for students. Therefore, nosotros hypothesized that we might observe varying reactions to video lectures with seductive details based on students' self-reported preferences. Still, students' preferences for lesson content did non affect the upshot of seductive details on students' video quiz scores, interest in video lectures, or perceived relevance of course material (Figure 2, B–D).

(A) Student preferences for lessons that include "just the facts" vs. lessons that include interesting merely irrelevant anecdotes. (B) Violin plots of reported interest in video lectures and perceived relevance of video lecture material to students' lives or future plans. (C) Violin plots of average cocky-reported perceptions of learning from video lectures. (D) Average video quiz scores for each lesson. Dots indicate mean score for each quiz; whiskers indicate the 95% confidence interval. n = 127, 147, 114, 149, 128, 146, 114, 147, 128, 147, 117, 147, 128, 151, 116, 147, 124, 147, 113, 149, 124, 149, 115, 146, 128, 149, 112, 146, 124, 142, 114, 142 sample points. SeD, seductive details.

Together, these information suggest that, reverse to previous lab studies, seductive details during video lectures exercise not take an omnibus negative effect on functioning in the context of a large flipped college biology course.

Students with High Self-Reported Prior Knowledge Perceive Greater Learning with Seductive Details

In previous studies ascribing a harmful effect to the employ of seductive details, a common hypothesized mechanism of the effect is that including interesting but irrelevant examples and stories increases the cognitive load experienced by the learner. This in turn decreases the corporeality of working memory bachelor for learners to use in learning relevant form material, potentially leading to decreased learning. Contempo studies have suggested that prior knowledge tin can mitigate the negative outcome of seductive details in the laboratory learning environment by decreasing the overall cognitive load experienced past the learner (Wang and Adesope, 2016 ; Fries et al., 2019 ).

To make up one's mind whether prior noesis moderated the effect of seductive details in the classroom, we binned students into depression and high prior knowledge groups based on a median split of cocky-reported precourse ability to achieve a form learning issue for each of the eight class sessions with seductive details. Students with low cocky-reported prior knowledge appeared unaffected past seductive details in both quiz functioning and melancholia measures (Table three). However, students with high self-reported prior noesis reported college perceived learning from videos that included seductive details than control videos (Table 3 and Figure three).

Tabular array 3.

Video quiz scores, interest, relevance, and perceived learning by self-reported prior cognition and seductive detail (SeD) grouping^a

	Depression prior cognition			High prior noesis
	Control	SeD	p value	Control	SeD	p value
Video quiz score	ane.67	one.66	0.741	ane.65	i.71	0.100
Video interest	2.48	2.52	0.566	2.36	two.44	0.451
Perceived relevance	2.51	2.54	0.732	2.42	ii.44	0.852
Perceived learning	vi.93	6.91	0.889	7.05	seven.67	0.011*

Violin plots showing perceptions of learning in students with low vs. loftier levels of cocky-reported prior knowledge. White circles prove the medians; box limits indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles as determined past R software; whiskers extend 1.5 times the interquartile range from the 25th and 75th percentiles; polygons represent density estimates of information and extend to extreme values. Significant differences (p < 0.05) are denoted with an asterisk. SeD, seductive details. due north.s., not meaning; *, p = 0.006

Despite a large issue size in this perceived learning mensurate (eta-squared = 0.06), these students did not view the videos with seductive details as whatever more interesting or relevant than control videos. The increase in perceived learning among students with loftier self-reported prior cognition did not translate to immediate significant differences in performance on video quizzes and exams meant to test knowledge retention or overall form grade compared with similar students who were not presented with seductive details (Table 4). In fact, students with high self-reported prior noesis performed similarly to students with low self-reported prior knowledge on all graded course items, regardless of whether or non they were presented with seductive details (Supplemental Tables S4 and S5).

Tabular array 4.

Midterm ane scores, last test scores, and concluding course percentage by self-reported prior noesis and seductive item (SeD) group^a

	Low prior noesis			High prior noesis			Overall
	Command	SeD	p value	Control	SeD	p value	Control	SeD	p value
Midterm 1 score	74.08	75.60	0.355	75.58	75.99	0.840	74.66	75.76	0.389
Concluding exam score	163.47	166.36	0.322	165.80	163.57	0.554	164.38	165.22	0.716
Final class percentage	84.51	85.25	0.510	85.13	84.76	0.798	84.75	85.05	0.730

Perceived Learning Is Enhanced by Seductive Details for Non–First Generation and Non–Underrepresented Students

Ane rationale usually cited by instructors for including seductive details in their course content is to increase the utility value or perceived relevance of course material. In particular, students who are first-generation or underrepresented are disproportionately likely to view grade content in introductory Stalk classes equally irrelevant to their own lives or customs values, potentially leading to a higher attrition charge per unit for these students in Stem majors (Harackiewicz et al., 2016 ). Therefore, we asked whether the seductive detail effect observed for students with high prior knowledge differed between first-generation or underrepresented students and other students. We hypothesized that these students would be more than likely to experience enhanced utility value in response to videos with seductive details.

Overall, beginning-generation and underrepresented students did not signal any effect of seductive details on video interest, relevance, or perceived learning, and those who were presented seductive details did not perform differently on video quizzes. Offset-generation students who were presented with seductive details did perform significantly meliorate on their first midterm examination, suggesting that seductive details may have the potential to impact learning, specifically over a longer term, for certain groups of students (Supplemental Table S3).

When nosotros disaggregated students into low and high prior knowledge groups, we found that, although perceived learning increases with seductive details for students with high prior knowledge as a whole, this effect is but significant in non–commencement generation and not–underrepresented students (Tabular array 5). Among students with low self-reported prior cognition, seductive details failed to bear upon students whether or not they were first-generation or underrepresented (Tabular array 6).

TABLE v.

Video quiz scores, interest, perceived relevance, and perceived learning by first-generation (FG) status and underrepresented minority (URM) status in students with high cocky-reported prior knowledge^a

	Non-FG (n = 194)		FG (n = 98)		Non-URM (n = 243)		URM (n = 52)
	Control	SeD	Command	SeD	Control	SeD	Control	SeD
Video quiz score	1.66	1.72	i.65	1.lxx	1.66	1.73	1.59	i.62
Video interest	2.22	2.26	2.63	2.68	2.43	2.46	2.17	2.32
Perceived relevance	2.24	2.24	2.72	2.68	2.48	2.47	2.20	2.28
Perceived learning	7.05	7.87*	7.00	vii.49	7.05	seven.70**	half-dozen.95	7.66

Tabular array half dozen.

Video quiz scores, interest, perceived relevance, and perceived learning by first-generation (FG) status and underrepresented minority (URM) condition in students with low self-reported prior knowledge^a

	Non-FG (due north = 261)		FG (n = 178)		Non-URM (n = 353)		URM (n = 94)
	Control	SeD	Control	SeD	Control	SeD	Control	SeD
Video quiz score	1.68	ane.68	1.67	i.65	1.72	i.lxx	one.51	1.53
Video interest	2.37	two.44	2.64	2.61	2.49	two.54	2.48	2.46
Perceived relevance	2.38	2.47	ii.67	2.62	2.45	ii.52	two.72	two.63
Perceived learning	6.89	half-dozen.87	vii.01	6.86	6.91	6.86	7.07	7.04

Seductive Details Are Memorable

The data demonstrate that, despite the fact that the add-on of seductive details did not lead to measurable gains in course learning goals as measured past quizzes, exams, and grade performance, students with high prior knowledge reported learning more than from videos when the videos included seductive details. We wondered whether this increase in perceived learning represented an bodily increase in learning that was non measured by the student learning outcomes (i.east., postvideo quizzes) but reflected information that students would nevertheless think and consider relevant to their learning. During the last week of instruction, when asked which topics from the video lectures they would be well-nigh likely to call back in 5 years, 16.3% of students in the seductive particular grouping mentioned ane or more seductive details that they would exist likely to remember without any specific prompting, despite seductive details making up a pocket-sized proportion of their video lectures (a total of 17 minutes and 13 seconds out of well-nigh eight hours of video content) for the initial iv weeks of the form simply, and never being tested on or brought upwardly subsequently. This indicates to u.s. that students considered these tangential topics to be salient and memorable. Nosotros therefore hypothesized that the observed increase in perceived learning among loftier prior cognition students might stand for a perceived increase in learning of textile non related to student learning outcomes.

In a postcourse survey given during the final week of instruction, a group of students in the seductive details condition was asked to "Have a moment to try and call back everything you tin call up about the L'Oreal True Tone instance that was provided as a office of a previous video lesson." This chestnut about a new line of makeup products past 50'Oreal meant to better reverberate variation in human pare tones was presented during the outset calendar week of the class. Student responses were coded into i of four categories: 1) student was unable to call up annihilation about the anecdote; 2) student was able to recall just the anecdote given, without any connection to a genetics concept with which it was associated; 3) student recalled but the linked genetic concept without any recall of the anecdote; or 4) educatee recalled the anecdote and the linked genetic concept. Nosotros found that students with high self-reported prior knowledge outperformed students with low cocky-reported prior knowledge in recalling relevant concept data associated with seductive details (Effigy four, A and B).

Seductive detail (SeD) retrieve accurateness for students with depression self-reported prior knowledge (A) and loftier self-reported prior knowledge (B). Inner circle of sunburst plot indicates the number of students who recalled the seductive detail example (blue, recall; gray, no recall). Outer circle indicates the extent to which students recalled the example given (greenish, chestnut recalled; yellow, genetics concept recalled; orange, chestnut and genetics concept recalled). (C) Percent of students who recalled details of the seductive detail example given based on their cocky-reported level of learning from the video lessons (self-reported learning was categorized based on a tercile dissever of boilerplate perceived learning levels). Blue, accurate recall of seductive detail; grayness, no recall or inaccurate recall of seductive detail.

While just 27.7% of low prior noesis students were able to retrieve anything most the seductive detail and/or the associated concept, 42.2% of the high prior cognition students accurately recalled details of the seductive particular and/or the associated concept. Taking a closer look, nosotros detect that 33.iii% of the high prior noesis students recalled the seductive item specifically compared with 18.5% for the low prior knowledge students. Furthermore, think of seductive details appeared to be significantly correlated with greater perceived learning from video lectures (linear-by-linear association, p = 0.038; Figure 4C). These data suggest that the increment in perceived learning from videos with seductive details may indeed reflect an actual increase in learning in domains unrelated to pupil learning outcomes for the course.

DISCUSSION

Overall, our information suggest that the inclusion of seductive details in video lectures does not damage undergraduate student learning in the context of a large flipped introductory genetics class. These results appear to differ from the reported negative touch on of seductive details on student learning in the educational psychology literature and are more consequent with research suggesting that it is students with high working memory and prior knowledge that most benefit from the inclusion of seductive details (Sanchez and Wiley, 2006 ; Park et al., 2011 , 2015b ; Sitzmann and Johnson, 2014 ).

Unlike previous research into the impact of seductive details on student learning and memory, our written report has the advantage of having a large sample size and taking place in an authentic learning context. Therefore, our findings are likely to be relevant in the blended learning environments that are becoming increasingly common at large inquiry universities. Our master results suggest that instructors concerned near derailing pupil learning with the utilise of seductive details need not worry, equally the inclusion of seductive details had no negative affect on student learning.

Reverse to our initial hypotheses and previous reports, the inclusion of seductive details did not impact pupil learning for most groups of students either positively or negatively as measured by course performance. We did detect an increase in midterm test scores for first-generation students, indicating that the presence of seductive details may accept a positive impact on learning over a medium- to long-term period for specific subsets of students.

Given our observed increase in perceived learning when students were provided seductive details, nosotros wondered why these details did non increment bodily learning. One possibility is that the seductive details included in this study were non interesting enough to capture students' attending and trigger associations between tangential "real-world" examples and course content. However, we have reason to believe that students did indeed observe the included seductive details to be interesting. Despite seductive details only making upward a total of 17 minutes out of most eight hours of total video content for the first 4 weeks of the course, when asked at the end of the 10-week form what topics they considered to be the nigh memorable from the course, a significant number of students mentioned seductive details that had non been referenced again in the grade since the first week. Additionally, the high level of recall observed for seductive details presented early in the quarter suggests that the details presented were memorable and interesting.

While we did not notice that seductive details directly increase bodily performance outcomes on summative assessments for most students, our results open the door for other possible mechanisms for learning. For instance, research in memory suggests that retrieval improves when content is associated with diverse and highly distinctive retrieval cues (Anderson, 1983 ; Uitvlugt and Healey, 2019 ). Hence, to the extent that seductive details are well remembered by students, they may provide a retrieval cue that might non otherwise exist for many students.

Information technology is also of import to highlight that seductive details may provide additional value in terms of helping to polish out a path for students to connect with their instructors. A cistron not often discussed in learning sciences research is the importance of professors edifice warm relationships with students (Christe, 2013 ). Seductive details may be 1 manner to show students that professors are relatable and accept a sense of sense of humor, which could create an entry signal for students to feel more comfortable attending office hours, request questions after class, and engaging in more meaningful interactions with instructors (Cooper et al., 2018 ). This potential effect would not be evident in the results of the report described here, as the seductive details were presented by a different instructor than the primary course teacher. Yet, they could assistance humanize the life sciences domain.

Our findings stand for an of import footstep toward understanding how seductive details affect students in the organic environment of a large flipped undergraduate science course. Hereafter expansions on this line of piece of work should investigate the possibility that different modes of seductive details (e.g., auditory, visual, or text based) might touch on students in different ways. Additionally, recent utility-value interventions have plant that students answer more robustly to cocky-generated existent-earth examples than to instructor-provided examples (Harackiewicz et al., 2016 ), and this self-generation effect may extend to students' responses to seductive details associated with course content—it is possible that students might exhibit a greater response to self-generated real-world stories that tangentially connect to topics in life sciences courses. Despite the demand for connected investigation into the effect of varying presentations of seductive details in the classroom, this written report represents an important step forrard in understanding the impacts of a long-derided but oftentimes-employed technique in a genuine classroom environment.

Supplementary Textile

Acknowledgments

Cheers to Dr. Hung Pham, the primary instructor of LS four: Genetics at the Academy of California, Los Angeles, during this study, whose enthusiastic support made this effort possible. We acknowledge support from the Life Sciences Core Curriculum Section at UCLA and the Department of Psychology at UCLA. This enquiry report was supported, in part, by a grant to UCLA from the National Science Foundation's Improving Undergraduate Stem Education program (DUE honour no. 1432804).

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6755318/

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