Investigating differential effects of a digital Ladder of Learning with adaptive support in chemistry

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Heterogeneity in students’ knowledge, cognitive abilities and interest is a significant characteristic of every school class. Teachers have to deal with this situation in every lesson and have to support students individually. In order to counteract this heterogeneity, the approach Ladder of Learning (LL) is appropriate to enable individual learning processes. In this project an existing example of a LL has been transferred into a digital version including adaptive support, and its effectiveness is investigated. In this way, the advantages of digital media can be used for learning.

The digital Ladder of Learning (dLL) focuses on the topic Bohr’s atomic model and was implemented in grade-nine chemistry classes. To investigate the advantages of the dLL, the students were divided into two groups: the intervention group worked with the new designed digital material with integrated adaptive support presented on tablets. The control group had comparable analogue material with the possibility to get separate adaptive support at its disposal. The intention of the pre-post quasi-experimental intervention study is to find out which effects a dLL has on students’ knowledge and interest compared to a usual version.