Process and Outcome Benefits for Orienting Students to Analyze and Reflect on Available Data in Productive Failure Activities

Invention activities are Productive Failure activities in which students attempt to invent methods that capture deep properties of given data before being taught expert solutions. The current study evaluates the effect of scaffolding on the invention processes and outcomes, given that students are not expected to succeed in their inquiry and that all students receive subsequent instruction. Two Invention activities related to data analysis concepts were given to 130 undergraduate students in a first-year physics lab course using an interactive learning environment. Students in the Guided Invention condition were given prompts to analyze given data prior to inventing and reflect on their methods after inventing them. These students outperformed Unguided Invention students on delayed measures of transfer, but not on measures of conceptual or procedural knowledge. In addition, Guided Invention students were more likely to invent multiple methods, suggesting that they used better self-regulated learning strategies.