Causal diagramming to improve students' monitoring accuracy and text comprehension: Effects of diagram standards and self-scoring instructions

Abstract

Students' monitoring of their text comprehension must be accurate for self-regulated learning to be effective. Completing causal diagrams after reading (i.e., diagramming) already improves students' monitoring accuracy to some extent. We investigated whether providing secondary school students with a standard (i.e., correctly completed) diagram and self-scoring instructions would further improve their monitoring accuracy and text comprehension in a delayed (Experiment 1; n = 98) or immediate (Experiment 2; n = 177) diagramming design. Self-scoring instructions did not improve monitoring accuracy or text comprehension compared to the control condition(s) in either experiment. Presumably, students self-scored their diagrams even without instructions to do so. In contrast to findings from prior diagramming research without standards, an explorative analysis suggests that delayed and immediate diagramming did not produce differences in monitoring accuracy. Immediate diagramming, however, led to better text comprehension than delayed diagramming and may therefore be preferable over delayed diagramming under certain conditions.