Writing Learning Protocols: Prompts Foster Cognitive and Metacognitive Activities as Well as Learning Outcome

Although learning protocols seem to be a promising possibility as a form of follow-up course work, cognitive and metacognitive learning activities proved to be suboptimal in “naive” protocols. Therefore, learning protocols were structured by prompts to elicit cognitive and metacognitive learning activities and thereby improve their effects. An experiment with four conditions was conducted. The learners received either (a) cognitive prompts, (b) metacognitive prompts, (c) mixed prompts, or (d) no prompts (control group) for writing a learning protocol. The prompts produced large effects on cognitive and metacognitive learning activities in the learning protocols. Nevertheless, only the groups who received cognitive or mixed prompts were superior with regard to (a) the learning outcomes on an immediate comprehension test and a 7-day-delayed test and (b) the accuracy of self-assessment in these tests. However, the learners did not perceive these prompts as helpful which should be addressed in an informed training.