ABSTRACT
Nowadays, the ability to accurately select one’s own learning activities is considered highly important. However, this skill must be acquired, which entails learning and practicing with a task-selection strategy and receiving feedback on that practice. This chapter discusses a checklist-based task-selection strategy aimed at prompting learners to self-assess their current performance and to decide what kind of task to select next. Since cognitive load theory predicts that learning tasks are ideally within the learner’s zone of proximal development (i.e., neither too simple nor too complex), accurate task selection is crucial. To compare experimental conditions in terms of task selection accuracy and to provide learners with feedback on their task selection behavior, we need measures of task selection accuracy. This chapter proposes two measures that to our knowledge have not yet been considered: Bias and Instability. Bias refers to a tendency towards selecting learning activities that are simpler (underchallenge) or more complex (overchallenge) than a learner could handle based on past task performance. Instability is not associated with a pronounced tendency towards underchallenge or overchallenge but is about going back and forth between underchallenge and overchallenge. Hence, Bias and Instability hint at different types of task selection behavior that have in common a tendency to select learning tasks outside the learner’s zone of proximal development. Along with post-test performance, Bias and Instability can be used as outcome measures in randomised controlled experiments to examine the effectiveness of different methods aimed at fostering the skill of task selection.
