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I pull my learning outcomes from this pdf every time I make a lesson plan. I always ensure to include a learning outcome from Nature of Science as well as my selected strand for the class

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Communicating- students are communicating with each other in groups, when presenting and with the teacher.

Being literate- students are being literate when writing on the poster, also reading comprehension added for literacy.

Staying well- Being social in the groups.

Managing information and thinking- Students have to find information online and sort through it for the poster.

Being Numerate- Calculating weight vs mass. using the Codapp activity, Interpreting date from a table.

Being Creative- students create posters.

Working with others- Students working in groups.

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Questions based on the Youtube video to check student understanding. National Geographic Youtube video

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Video to give students a basic understanding of earth and space

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Planets are celestial bodies that orbit around a star. 

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My students seem to understand better when shown images and gifs so I try add them to all lessons

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E&S 1: Students should be able to describe the relationships between various celestial objects including moons, asteroids, comets, planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies and space
NOS 7: Students should be able to organise and communicate their research and investigative findings in a variety of ways fit for purpose and audience, using relevant scientific terminology and representations

Resources to E&S 2,3 are also shown in this padlet as they link to eachother and flow nicely for lessons.

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Unit of Learning (02) Space an the Origin of the Universe

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PowerPoint Presentation for this lesson, more PowerPoints were used this is the one of the lesson plan I submitted

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Powerpoint continued

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This learning outcome can be linked to:
E&S 2: Students should be able to explore a scientific model to illustrate the origin of the universe
and
E&S 3: Students should be able to interpret data to compare the Earth with other planets and moons in the solar system, with respect to properties including mass, gravity, size, and composition

Students need to learn about the origin of the universe to understand where celestial bodies came from.
During their research for the projects students had to learn about planet composition so this leads nicely into E&S 3

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The textbook used to accompany this class was Folens Essential Science - second edition

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Science | Planning Documents | Junior Cycle for Teachers (JCT)

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Solar system is a group of planets, asteroids, comets and other celestial bodies that are in orbit around a star. Our star is the sun 

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I used this gif to show our solar system

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I use these in lesson plans

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This is an article I read and found very helpful at the start of placement

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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

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Summative Assessment Video

In the video, viewers learn about the critical role that a variety of summative assessments play and the importance of strategic data use. Summative assessments provide cumulative snapshots to evaluate and report on student learning.

Summative data can help illuminate areas of strength and gaps in curriculum and instruction, and especially for student subgroups. Reporting summative results provides information to families and the general public. Summative data should never be used as the only indicator of success for a student or a school.
Key messages from the video:

Summative assessments are designed to evaluate and report on cumulative student learning

Data from summative assessments:

are derived from a variety of sources, not just standardized or statewide tests

can answer whether ALL students have met the standards successfully

should be used strategically with formative and interim data to inform teaching and learning

provides key information for conversations around student learning

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Are All of Our Students Meeting the Standards? Summative assessments are designed to evaluate learning by providing cumulative snapshots, often but not exclusively through standardized assessments that are typically school-, district-, or state-centered, and that answer "are all of our students meeting the standards?"

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Abstract

As assessment plays an important role in the process of teaching and learning, this research explored the impacts of formative and summative assessments on academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill of EFL students in Iran. To fulfill the objectives of this research, 72 Iranian EFL learners were chosen based on the convenience sampling method assigned to two experimental groups (summative group and formative group) and a control group. Then, the groups took the pre-tests of test anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation skill. Then, one experimental group was trained by following the rules of the formative assessment and the other experimental group was taught according to the summative assessment. The control group was instructed without using any preplanned assessment. After a 15-session treatment, the post-tests of the test anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation skill were administered to all groups to assess the impacts of the instruction on their language achievement. Lastly, a questionnaire of attitude was administered to both experimental groups to examine their attitudes towards the impacts of formative and summative assessment on their English learning improvement. The outcomes of one-way ANOVA and Bonferroni tests revealed that both summative and formative assessments were effective but the formative one was more effective on academic motivation, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill. The findings of one sample t-test indicated that the participants had positive attitudes towards summative and formative assessments. Based on the results, it can be concluded that formative assessment is an essential part of teaching that should be used in EFL instructional contexts. The implications of this study can help students to detect their own weaknesses and target areas that need more effort and work.

Keywords: Academic motivation, Attitude toward learning, Formative assessment, Self-regulation skill, Summative assessment, Test anxiety

Introduction

In teaching and learning, assessment is defined as a procedure applied by instructors and students during instruction through which teachers provide necessary feedbacks to modify ongoing learning and teaching to develop learners' attainment of planned instructional aims (Robinowitz, 2010). According to Popham ( 2008), assessment is an intended procedure in which evidence of learners' status is utilized by educators to adjust their ongoing instructional processes or applied by learners to change their present instructional strategies. Assessment intends to improve learning and it is used to reduce the gap between students' present instructional situation and their target learning objectives (Heritage, 2012).

Two types of assessment are formative and summative. According to Glazer ( 2014), summative assessment is generally applied to give learners a numerical score with limited feedback. Therefore, summative assessment is commonly used to measure learning and is rarely used for learning. Educators can make the summative assessment more formative by giving learners the opportunity to learn from exams. This would mean supplying pupils with feedback on exams and making use of the teaching potentiality of exams. Wininger ( 2005) proposed an amalgamation of assessment techniques between summative assessment and formative assessment. This marriage between summative assessment and formative assessment is referred to as summative-formative assessment. Based on Wininger, summative-formative assessment is used to review the exam with examinees so they can get feedback on comprehension. Formative-summative assessment occurs in two primary forms: using a mock exam before the final or using the final exam before the retake.

Wiliam ( 2014) also asserts that self-regulation learning can be a crucial part of a productive formative assessment concerning the techniques of explaining, sharing, and understanding the instructional goals and students' success and responsibility for their own learning. Self-regulation skill requires learners to dynamically utilize their cognitive skills; try to achieve their learning aims; receive support from their classmates, parents, and instructors when needed; and most significantly, be responsible for their own learning (Ozan & Kıncal, 2018). This research aimed to explore the impacts of using summative and formative assessments of Iranian EFL learners' academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill. This study is significant as it compared the effects of two kinds of assessments namely formative and summative on academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill. As this research investigated the effects of the mentioned assessments on four emotional variables simultaneously, it can be considered as a novel study.

Review of the literature

In the field of teaching English as a foreign language, several researchers and experts defined the term "assessment" as a pivotal component of the process of teaching. According to Brown ( 2003), assessment is a process of collecting data about learners' capabilities to conduct learning tasks. That is, assessment is the way instructors use to gather data about their methods and their pupils' improvement. Furthermore, the assessment process has got an inseparable component from teaching, since it is impossible to think of teaching without assessments. Brown ( 2003) defined assessment in relation to testing. The differences between them refer to the fact that the latter occurs at an identified point of time while the former is an ongoing process that occurs regularly (Brown, 2003).

Two types of assessment are formative and summative. Popham ( 2008) said that it is not the nature of the tests to be labeled as summative or formative but the use to which that tests' outcomes will be put. That is to say, the summative-formative manifestation of assessment does not stop at being a typology but it expands to be purposive due to the nature of assessment. Summative assessment, then, has been referred to as some criteria. Cizek ( 2010) suggests that two criteria can define the summative assessment: (1) it is conducted at the termination of some units and (2) its goal is mainly to characterize the performances of the students or systems. Its major goal is to gain measurement of attainment to be utilized in making decisions.

Through Cizek's definition, a summative assessment seeks to judge the learners' performances in every single course. Thus, providing diagnostic information is not what this type of assessment is concerned with. Significantly, the judgments made about the students, teachers, or curricula are meant to grade, certificate, evaluate, and research on how effective curricula are, and these are the purposes of summative assessment according to Cizek ( 2010).

According to Black and Wiliam ( 2006), summative assessment is given occasionally to assess what pupils know and do not know. This type of assessment is done after the learning has been finalized and provides feedback and information that summarize the learning and teaching process. Typically, no more formal learning is occurring at this stage, other than incidental learning that may happen via completing the assignments and projects (Wuest & Fisette, 2012). Summative assessment measures what students have learned and mostly is conducted at the end of a course of instruction (Abeywickrama & Brown, 2010; Liu et al., 2021; Rezai et al., 2022).

For Woods ( 2015), the summative assessment provides information to judge the general values of the instructional programs, while the outcomes of formative assessment are used to facilitate the instructional programs. Based on Shepard ( 2006), a summative assessment must accomplish its major purpose of documenting what learners know and can do but, if carefully created, should also efficaciously fulfill a secondary objective of learning support.

The term 'formative assessment' has been proposed for years and defined by many researchers. A clearer definition is provided by Brown ( 2003) in which he claims that formative assessment is referred to the evaluation of learners in the process of "forming" their skills and competencies to help them to keep up that growth process. It is also described as comprising all those activities conducted by instructors or by their learners that supply information to be utilized as feedback to adjust the learning and teaching activities in which they are involved (Fox et al., 2016).

Formative assessments aim to gain immediate feedback on students learning through which strengths and weaknesses of students can be diagnosed. Comprehensively, Wiliam ( 2011) suggests: Practices in the classrooms are formative to the extent that evidence about students' accomplishments is elicited, interpreted, and utilized by instructors, students, or their classmates, to decide about the subsequent steps in the education that are probably to be better or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of the evidence that was elicited.

Through this definition, formative assessment actively involves both students' and teachers' participation as a key component to develop students' performance. The assessment for learning, which is based on the aim behind using it, is assessing learners' progress (McCallum & Milner, 2021). Therefore, it is all about gathering data about learners' achievement to recognize their progress in skills, requirements, and capabilities as their weaknesses and strengths before, during, and after the educational courses to develop students' learning and achievement (Douglas & Wren, 2008).

Some criteria related to formative assessment have been presented by Cizek ( 2010). In his opinion, formative assessment attempts to identify students' levels whether high or low, to provide more help for educators to plan subsequent instruction, to make it easier for students to continue their own learning, review their work, and be able to evaluate themselves. To make learners responsible for their learning and do their research Formative assessment, to Cizek, is a sufficient tool and area for learners and teachers to make proficiency in the learning-teaching process. All in all, concerning specific objectives, formative assessment is a goal-oriented process.

The theory that is behind our study is the sociocultural theory stating that knowledge is generated in a cooperative way within social contexts. It views learning as a condition wherein learners generate their meanings from the materials and content delivered to them, rather than trying to memorize the information (Vygotsky, 1978). Based on sociocultural theory, learning can occur successfully when teachers and students have more interactions with each other.

Some empirical studies are reported here. Alahmadi et al. ( 2019) aimed to examine whether a formative speaking assessment produced any effect on learners' performances in the summative test. Besides, they aimed to observe students' learning and to provide useful feedbacks that can be applied by educators to develop learners' achievement and assist them to detect their weaknesses and strengths in speaking skills. Their results indicated that formative assessment helped Saudi learners to solve the problems they encounter in speaking tests.

Mahshanian et al. ( 2019) highlighted the significance of summative assessment in conjunction with teacher-based (formative) assessments on the learners' performances. To do this study, 170 EFL students at the advanced level were chosen and grouped based on the kind of assessment they had received. The subjects in this research were administered exams for two main reasons. First, a general proficiency test was given to put the students at different levels of proficiency. Second, for comparing students' development according to different kinds of assessments within a 4-month learning duration, an achievement test of the course was administered both as the pre-test and the post-test. The data gained via the scores of the participants on the achievement test received analyses and then compared by utilizing ANCOVA, ANOVA, and t- tests. Based on the outcomes of this research, we can conclude that an amalgamation of summative and formative assessments can result in better achievements for EFL students than either summative or formative assessments discretely.

Imen ( 2020) attempted to determine the effects of formative assessments on EFL learners' writing skills. Indeed, the goal of this study was to recognize the effects of formative assessments on developing the writing skills of first-year master's students at Abdel Elhamid Ibn Badis University, in Mostaganem. This research also attempted to reveal an essential issue that is the lack of the execution of formative assessments in the writing classrooms. To verify the hypotheses, two tools were applied in this study to gather the data, the teachers' questionnaire and the students' questionnaire. The findings of the study revealed that the formative assessment was not extensively used in teaching and learning writing skills, at the University of Mostaganem. The results of both questionnaires showed that if the students were evaluated formatively, their writing skills could be highly enhanced.

Ashdale ( 2020) attempted to examine the influences of a particular formative assessment named as Progress Trackers, by comparing a control group that did not receive the Progress Tracker with an experimental group that received the formative-based assessment. The research findings revealed that there were no substantial differences between the experimental and control groups based on the results of the pre-test and the post-test scores. While not statistically significant, the experimental group showed a larger increase in the learners with at least a 60% development in achievement. The lack of significant differences between the experimental group and the control group could be created by the uselessness of the formative assessments or the inability to exclude other factors in the class contexts. This could comprise the uses of other formative assessments applied in both groups, delivery of content, and execution of the formative assessments.

Persaud Singh and Ewert ( 2021) investigated the effects of quizzes and mock exams as a formative assessment on working adult learners' achievement using a quasi-experimental quantitative design. One experimental group received both quizzes and mock exams, another group received mock exams only, and a control group received neither. The data gathered received analyses by utilizing t-tests and ANOVA. The findings indicated noticeable differences in the levels of achievement for the groups receiving formative assessments in comparison to the control participants. The "mock exam" group outperformed slightly than the "quizzes and mock exam" group.

Al Tayib Umar and Abdulmlik Ameen ( 2021) traced the effects of formative assessment on Saudi EFL students' achievement in medical English. The research also tried to figure out teachers' and students' attitudes toward formative assessment. The participants involved in this research were 98 students selected among the Preparatory Year learners at a Saudi university. They were assigned to an experimental group and a control group. The experimental students were given their English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses following the formative assessment techniques whereas the control group was trained in their ESP courses by traditional assessment rules. The experimental group teachers were given intensive training courses in Saudi Arabia and abroad on how to use formative assessment principles in the classrooms. At the end of the experiment that continued for 120 days, the control and experimental groups sat for the end of term examination which was designed for all candidates in the Preparatory College. Grades of all participants in the two groups in the final exam were compared. The performance of the experimental group was found to be meaningfully higher than that of the control group. Instructors' and students' attitudes towards formative assessment were positive.

Hamedi et al. ( 2022) investigated the effects of using formative assessment by Kahoot application on Iranian EFL students' vocabulary knowledge as well as their burnout levels. This study was conducted on 60 participants who were in two groups of experimental and control. The results indicated that using formative assessment generated significant effects on of Iranian EFL students' vocabulary knowledge.

In conclusion, the above studies confirmed the positive effects of summative and formative assessment on language learning. Yet, there are a few kinds of research on comparing the effects of the summative and formative assessments on Iranian EFL learners' academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill. Most studies in the domain of assessment examined the effects of the summative and formative assessments on the main skills (reading, speaking, writing, and listening) and they did not pay much attention to the psychosocial variables; therefore, this research posed two questions to cover the existing gap.

RQ1. Does using formative and summative assessments positively affect Iranian EFL learners' test anxiety, academic motivation, and self-regulation skill?

RQ2. Do Iranian EFL learners present positive attitudes toward learning through formative and summative assessments?

Methodology

Design of the study

Participants

The participants of this research were 72 Iranian EFL students who have studied English since 2016. The male EFL learners were selected based on the convenience sampling method by administering the Preliminary English Test (PET). They were selected from the Parsian English language institute, located in Ahvaz city, Iran. The participants' general English proficiency was intermediate and their age average was 21 years old. The participants were divided into two experimental groups (summative and formative) and a control group.

Instrumentations

For homogenizing the subjects in terms of general English proficiency, we gave a version of the PET test, extracted from the book PET Practice Test (Quintana, 2008). Because of some limitations, only the sections of reading, grammar, and vocabulary of the test were used in this study. We piloted the test on another similar group and allotted 60 min for answering all its items. Its validity was accepted by some English experts and its reliability was .91.

Britner and Pajares' ( 2006) Science Anxiety Scale (SAS) was used as the other instrument to assess the participants' test anxiety. Some wordings of the items were changed to make them suitable for measuring test anxiety. There were 12 items in this test that required the participants to consider the items (e.g., I am worried that I will get weak scores in most of the exams) and answer a 6-point scale ranging from certainly false to certainly true. Based on Cronbach's alpha formula, the reliability index of the anxiety test was .79.

The other tool used in this study was the Self-Regulatory Strategies Scale (SRSS) which was developed by Kadıoğlu et al. ( 2011) to assess the self-regulation skills of the participants. The SRSS was a 6-point Likert instrument including never, seldom, occasionally, often, frequently, and constantly. The SRSS consisted of 29 statements in eight dimensions. The results of Cronbach's alpha formula showed that the reliability of the SRSS was .82.

We used the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) of Gardner ( 2004) to evaluate the respondents' English learning motivation. This measuring instrument had 26 items each with six responses: Highly Disagree, Moderately Disagree, Somewhat Disagree, Somewhat Agree, Moderately Agree, and Highly Agree. We used the Cronbach alpha to measure the reliability of the motivation questionnaire ( r = .87). It should be noted that the motivation questionnaire, the SAS, and the SRSS were used as the pre-tests and post-tests of the research.

The last tool employed in this research was an attitude questionnaire examining the participants' attitudes towards the effectiveness of summative and formative assessment on their English learning enhancement. The researchers themselves created 17-point Likert- items for this questionnaire and the reliability of this instrument was .80. Likert scale was utilized in the questionnaire to show the amount of disagreement and agreement from 1 to 5 that were highly disagree, disagree, no idea, agree, and highly agree. The validities of all mentioned tools were substantiated by a group of English specialists.

Collecting the needed data

To start the study, first, the PET was administered to 96 EFL learners and 72 intermediate participants were selected among them. As stated previously, the participants were divided into two experimental groups (summative and formative) and one control group. After that, the pretests of test anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation skill were administered to the participants of all groups. After pretesting process, the treatment was conducted on the groups differently; each group received special instruction.

One experimental group was instructed based on the rules of the formative assessment, in the formative group, the teacher (researcher) assisted the students to participate in evaluating their learning via using self and peer assessment. Besides, the teacher's comprehensive and descriptive elicitation and feedbacks of information about students' learning were significant in formative class. In fact, there were no tests at the termination of the term and the teacher was flexible concerning the students' mistakes and provided them with constructive feedback including metalinguistic clues, elicitation, correction, repletion, clarification request, recast, and repletion.

In the summative class, the teacher assessed the students' learning by giving mid-term and final exams. The teacher did not provide any elaborative feedback, and his feedback was limited to yes/no and true/ false. The control group neither received a formative-based instruction nor a summative-based instruction. The teacher of the control group instructed them without utilizing any preplanned assessments. They finished the course without any formative and summative assessments. After the treatment, the post-tests of the test anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation skill were given to all groups to assess the influences of the intervention on their language achievement. In the final step, the questionnaire of attitude was distributed among both experimental groups to check their opinions about the impacts of summative and formative assessment on their English learning improvement.

The whole study lasted 23 sessions; each took 50 min. In one session, the PET test was administered and in the next three sessions, three pre-tests were conducted. During 15 sessions, the treatment was carried out; in three sessions, three post-tests were given to the participants, and in the last session the attitudinal questionnaire was administered to examine the participants' attitudes towards the effectiveness of summative and formative assessment of their English learning achievement.

Data analysis

Having prepared all needed data via the procedures mentioned above, some statistical steps were taken to provide answers to the questions raised in this study. First, the data were analyzed descriptively to compute the means of the groups. Second, some one-way ANOVA and Bonferroni tests were used for analyzing the data inferentially. Third, one sample t- test was utilized to analyze the motivation questionnaire data.

Results and discussion

After checking and getting sure about the normality distribution of the data by using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, we used several one-way ANOVA tests and reported their results in the following tables:

Table 5

(I) groups

(J) groups

Mean differences (I-J)

Std. errors

Sig.

95% confidence intervals

Lower bounds

Upper bounds

The results indicate significant differences between the self-regulation post-tests of the groups in favor of the experimental groups (Table ). Based on the inferential statistics, the performances of the three groups on the self-regulation post-test are different and the summative group and the formative group outflank the control group.

Table 10

(I) groups

(J) groups

Mean differences (I-J)

Std. errors

Sig.

95% confidence intervals

Lower bounds

Upper bounds

Table 15

(I) groups

(J) groups

Mean differences (I-J)

Std. errors

Sig.

95% confidence intervals

Lower bounds

Upper bounds

As depicted in Table , the amount of statistic T-value is 63.72, df=16, and Sig=0.00 which is less than 0.05. This implies that Iranian students held positive attitudes towards the effectiveness of summative and formative assessments on their language learning improvement.

Table 16

Test value = 0

T

Df

Sig. (2-tailed)

Mean differences

95% confidence interval of the differences

Lower

Upper

Scores

63.72

16

.000

4.52

4.37

4.67

Briefly, the results indicate that both experimental groups had better performances than the control group in their post-tests. The formative group had the best performance among the three groups of this study. Additionally, the results reveal that the participants of the present research had positive attitudes towards the effectiveness of both formative and summative assessments on their language learning development.

After analyzing the data, it was found that all three groups were at the same levels of test anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation skill at the outset of the research. But, the performances of the three groups were different at the end of the investigation. Both experimental groups outdid the control group on their post-tests and the formative group performed better among the three groups. Although both types of assessments (summative and formative) were effective on test the anxiety, motivation, and self-regulation skill of EFL learners, the formative assessment was the most effective one. The findings of the current research also indicated that both experimental groups presented positive attitudes toward the implementation of the summative and formative assessments in EFL classes.

The findings gained in this study are supported by Persaud Singh and Ewert ( 2021) who inspected the impacts of formative assessment on adult students' language improvement. They indicated that there were meaningful differences between the formative participants and the control participants in terms of language achievement in favor of the formative participants. Additionally, our research findings are advocated by Alahmadi et al. ( 2019) who explored the effects of formative speaking assessments on EFL learners' performances in speaking tests. They showed that the formative assessment assisted Saudi EFL learners to solve the problems they encountered in speaking tests.

In addition, our study findings are in accordance with Mahshanian et al. ( 2019) who confirmed that the amalgamation of summative and formative assessment can result in better achievement in English language learning. Also, our investigation lends support to the findings of Buyukkarci and Sahinkarakas ( 2021) who verified the positive effects of using formative assessment on learners' language achievement. Additionally, the results of the current research are in agreement with Ounis ( 2017) who stated that formative assessment facilitated and supported students' learning. Our study findings are supported by the sociocultural theory which focuses on the role of social interactions among the students and their teachers in the classroom. Based on this perspective, the learning process is mainly a social process and students' cognitive functions are made based on their interactions with those around them.

Furthermore, our research results are in agreement with the results of Imen ( 2020) who discovered the impacts of formative assessments on EFL students' writing abilities. His results indicated that using formative assessment develops the participants' writing skills. Moreover, our research outcomes are supported by the impacts of formative assessments on learners' academic attainment, opinions about lessons, and self-regulation skills in Ozan and Kıncal ( 2018) who performed an investigation on the influences of formative assessments on students' attitudes toward lessons, academic achievement, and self-regulation skill. They revealed that the experimental class that received the treatment by formative assessment practices had better academic performances and more positive attitudes towards the classes than the control class.

Regarding the positive attitudes of the participants towards formative and summative assessment, our results are in line with Tekin ( 2010) who discovered that formative assessment practices meaningfully developed students' attitudes about mathematics learning. That research indicated that the participants in the treatment group had positive attitudes about mathematics learning. In addition, King ( 2003) asserted that the formative assessments enhanced the learners' attitudes about science classes. Also, Hwang and Chang ( 2011) revealed that the formative assessment highly boosted the attitudes and interest of students toward learning in local culture classes.

One explanation for the outperformance of the formative group over the other two groups can be the fact that they received much more input. They were provided with different kinds of feedback and took more exams during the semester. These exams and feedback can be the reasons for their successes in language achievement. This is in line with Krashen's ( 1981) input theory stating that if students are exposed to more input, they can learn more.

The other possible explanations for our results are that formative assessments are not graded so they take the anxiety away from the assessees. They also detach the thinking that they must get everything right. Instead, they serve as a practice for students to get assistance along the way before the final tests. Teachers usually check for understanding if students are struggling during the lesson. Teachers address these issues early on instead of waiting until the end of the unit to assess. Teachers have to do less reteaching at the end because many of the problems with mastery are addressed before final tests. The mentioned advantages can be the reasons for our obtained findings.

In addition, monitoring the students' learning via using the formative assessment can be the other justification for our results. In fact, monitoring the learning process can provide an opportunity for the teachers to give constructive feedback to their students to improve their language learning. When teachers continuously monitor students' growth and modify instruction to ensure constant development, they find it easier and more predictable to progress towards meeting the standards on summative assessments. By comprehending precisely what their students know before and during the instruction, teachers have much more power to improve the students' mastery of the subject matter than if they find out after a lesson or unit is complete.

It is important to point out that when instructors continually evaluate the development of their students and modify their curriculum to assure constant improvement, they find that it is simpler and more predictable to make progress toward fulfilling the requirements on summative assessments. If teachers wait until the end of a session or unit to find out how well their learners have mastered the material, they will have considerably less influence over how well their learners learn the material than if they find out how well their learners have mastered it earlier and during teaching. The value of formative assessment lies in the critical information about student comprehension that it provides throughout the process of learning, as well as the chance it gives educators to provide participants with quick and efficient, and action-oriented feedback, as well as the chance to alter their own behavior so that every respondent has the chance to learn and re-learn the material. Learners whose academic performance falls on the extreme ends of the normal curve, such as those who are struggling and those who excel academically, benefit the most from formative evaluation. These learners have learning requirements that are often one of a kind and highly specialized, and to meet those needs, the instructor needs updated data. In addition, making use of frequent formative evaluation as a means to remediate learning gaps brought up by COVID-19 guarantees that educators can promptly give remediation.

The other justification for our findings can be ascribed to the strength of formative assessments that lies in the formative information they provide about the students' comprehension throughout the learning process and the opportunities they give to teachers to provide the pupils with action-oriented and timely feedback and to change their own behaviors so that each learner has an opportunity to learn and re-learn. More particularly, using formative assessment can assist the students to detect their own weaknesses and strengths and target areas that need more effort and work. All the positive points enumerated for the formative assessments can be the reasons and explanations for the results gained in the current research.

Moreover, the better performance of assessment groups may be due to numerous reasons. In the first place, consistently evaluating students' progress helps maintain learning objectives at the forefront of one's mind. This ensures that learners have a distinct goal to strive towards and that instructors have the opportunity to assist clear up misconceptions before learners get off track. Second, engaging in the process of formative assessment enables instructors to gather the information that reveals the requirements of their students. When instructors have a clear grasp of what it takes for their students to be successful, they are better able to design challenging educational environments that push every learner to their full potential. Thirdly, the primary role of formative assessment that will assist in enhancing academic achievement is to provide both learners and instructors with frequent feedback on the achievement that is being made toward their objectives. Learners can bridge the gap between their existing knowledge and their learning objectives through the use of formative assessment (Greensetin, 2010). The fourth benefit of doing the formative assessment is an increase in motivation. Formative assessment entails creating learning objectives and monitoring the progress towards those objectives. When learners have a clear idea of where they want to go, their performance dramatically improves. Fifthly, students must identify a purpose for the work that is assigned to them in the classroom. Connecting the learning objectives with real-world problems and situations draws students into the instructional activities and feeds their natural curiosity about the world. Sixthly, an in-depth examination of the data gathered via formative assessment provides the educator with the opportunity to investigate their own methods of teaching and identify those that are successful and those that are not. It is indeed possible that some of the strategies that work for one group of learners won't work for another. Lastly, students become self-regulated when they are provided with the tools they need to set, track, and ultimately achieve their own learning objectives. Students may develop into self-reliant thinkers if they are exposed to models of high-quality work and given adequate time to reflect on and refine their own work.

The positive effects of formative and summative assessment on students' motivation are supported by The Self Determination Theory (SDT) of Motivation which is a motivational theory that provides a way of understanding human motivation in any context (Ryan & Deci, 2000). SDT attempts to understand human motivation beyond the simple intrinsic/extrinsic model. It suggests that human motivation varies from fully intrinsic motivation, which is characterized by fully autonomous behavior and "for its own sake" to fully extrinsic motivation, which is characterized by behavior that is fully heteronomous and which is instrumentalized to some other end.

It is vital to note that learners who have developed self-regulation skills employ their cognitive abilities; work toward their learning objectives; seek out appropriate support from peers, adults, and authority figures; and, most significantly, accept personal accountability for their academic success. As a result, learners' abilities to self-regulate have a direct effect on the type of formative assessment based on learning and the applications designed to eliminate learning deficiencies. Self-regulation is an ability that needs time and practice to acquire, but it is possible to do so with the right tools and a continuous strategy. Formative assessment techniques were shown to boost learners' ability to self-regulate, although this effect was found to be small when the study findings were combined with those found in the literature. This finding may be attributed to the fact that, although formative assessment procedures were implemented for an academic year, they were limited to the context of the social research classroom, and students' abilities to self-regulate may develop and evolve over time.

The findings of this research can increase the knowledge of the students about two types of assessment. This study can encourage students to want their teachers to assess their performances formatively during the semester. Also, the findings of this study can assist instructors to implement more formative-based assessments and feedback in their classes. This study can highlight the importance of frequent input, feedback, and exam for teachers. An exact analysis of formative assessment data permits the teachers to inspect their instructional practices in order to understand which are producing positive results and which are not. Some that are effective for one group of students may not be effective for another group. The implications of this research can help students try to compensate for their deficiencies by taking responsibility for their own learning instead of just attempting to get good grades. In this respect, formative assessments ensure that students can manage the negative variables such as a high level of examination and grading.

Using formative assessments helps teachers gather the information that reveals the students' needs. Once teachers have an understanding of what students need to be successful, they can generate a suitable learning setting that will challenge each learner to grow. Providing students and teachers with regular feedback on progress towards their aims is the major function of the formative assessments that will help in increasing academic accomplishment. Formative assessments can help the students close the gap between their present knowledge and their learning objectives. Moreover, using formative assessment gives the students evidence of their present progress to actively monitor and modify their own learning. This also provides the students the ability to track their educational objectives. Also, via using formative assessment, the students have the ability to measure their learning at a metacognitive level. As the students are one of the main agents of the teaching-learning process, instructors must share the learning objectives with them. This sharing can develop the students' learning in basic knowledge and higher order cognitive processes such as application and transfer (Fulmer, 2017). In fact, if learners know that they are expected to learn in that lesson, they will concentrate more on those areas. Formative assessments make the teaching more effective by guiding learners to achieve learning objectives, setting learning needs, modifying teaching accordingly, and increasing teachers' awareness of efficient teaching methods. Lastly, our findings may aid material developers to implement more formative-based assessment activities in the EFL English books.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this study proved the positive impacts of applying formative assessments on Iranian EFL students' academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill. Therefore, teachers are strongly recommended to use formative assessment in their classes to help students improve their language learning. Using formative assessment allows teachers to modify instruction according to the results; consequently, making modifications and improvements can generate immediate benefits for their students' learning.

One more conclusion is that using formative assessment gives the teacher the ability to provide continuous feedback to their students. This allows the students to be part of the learning environment and to improve self-assessment strategies that will help with the understanding of their own thinking processes. All in all, providing frequent feedback during the learning process is regarded as an efficient technique for motivating and encouraging students to learn a language more successfully. Indeed, by assessing students during the lesson, the teachers can aid them to improve their skills and examine if they are progressing or not. Thus, formative assessment is an essential part of teaching that should be used in EFL instructional contexts.

As we could not include many participants in our study, we recommend that future researchers include a large number of participants to increase the generalizability of their results. We worked on male EFL learners; the next studies are required to work on both genders. We could not gather qualitative data to enrich our results; the upcoming researchers are advised to collect both quantitative and qualitative data to develop the validity of their results. Next researchers are called to examine the effects of the summative and formative assessments on language skills and sub-skills. Also, next researchers are offered to inspect the effects of other types of assessments on language skills and subskills as well as on psychological variables involved in language learning.

Abbreviations

EFL

English as a foreign language

ANOVA

Analysis of variance

PET

Preliminary English Test

SAS

Science Anxiety Scale

SRSS

Self-Regulatory Strategies Scale

AMTB

Attitude/Motivation Test Battery

SDT

Self Determination Theory

EG

Experimental group

CG

Control group

Authors' contributions

All authors had equal contributions. The author(s) read and approved the final manuscript.

Authors' information

Seyed M. Ismail is an assistant professor at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. His research interests are teaching and learning, testing, and educational strategies. He published many papers in different journals.

D. R. Rahul is an assistant professor School of Science and Humanities, Shiv Nadar University Chennai, Chennai, India. He has published several research papers in national and international language teaching journals.

Indrajit Patra is an Independent Researcher. He got his PhD from NIT Durgapur, West Bengal, India.

Ehsan Rezvani is an assistant professor in Applied Linguistics at Islamic Azad University, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Isfahan, Iran. He has published many research papers in national and international language teaching journals.

Funding

We did not receive any funding at any stage.

Availability of data and materials

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Footnotes

Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Seyed M. Ismail, Email: as.ude.uasp@liamsi.a.

D. R. Rahul, Email: moc.liamg@ttinrdluhar.

Indrajit Patra, Email: moc.liamg@0nortengampi.

Ehsan Rezvani, Email: ri.ca.fsiuhk@inavzer.e.

References

Liu, F., Vadivel, B., Mazaheri, F., Rezvani, E., & Namaziandost, E. (2021). Using games to promote efl learners' willingness to communicate (WTC): Potential effects and teachers' attitude in focus. [Frontiers in Psychology, 4526. PMC free article] [PubMed]

Ryan RM, Deci EL. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist. 2000;55(1):68-95. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68. [[PubMed] [CrossRef] Google Scholar]

Tahir, M., Tariq, H., Mubashira, K., & Rabbia, A. (2012). Impact of formative assessment on academic achievement of secondary school students. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(17) http://myflorida.com/apps/vbs/vbs_www.ad.view_ad?advertisement_key_num=107800.

Woods, N. (2015). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning. The Journal of Education Retrieved from https://thejournalofeducation.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/formative-assessment-and-self-regulated-learning/.

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Formative vs. summative assessment: impacts on academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill

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As assessment plays an important role in the process of teaching and learning, this research explored the impacts of formative and summative assessments on academic motivation, attitude toward learning, test anxiety, and self-regulation skill of EFL students in Iran.

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Abstract

The present study examines the potential impact of a mnemonic acronym on the learning, the execution, the resilience toward interruptions, and the mental representation of an eight-step procedural task with sequential constraints. 65 participants were required to learn a sequential task, including eight different steps which had to be carried out in a predefined sequence. 33 participants were provided with the acronym "WORTKLAU" as a mnemonic to support the learning and execution of the task and the other 32 participants had to learn and execute the task without such support. Each letter of the acronym coded one step of the task, involving a binary decision about a certain property of the complex stimulus. In 60 out of 72 trials of the task, participants were interrupted between different steps, and had to perform a 2-back interruption task for 6 or 30 s, after which they had to resume the procedural task as quickly as possible at the correct step. Learning times, performance in uninterrupted trials, and post-interruption performance measures were analyzed. Results of Experiment 1 suggest that the mnemonic acronym enhanced learning of the task sequence, and provide some evidence for a hierarchical mental representation of the task, resulting in faster resumption times at certain steps of the procedure after an interruption. In Experiment 2 the internal structure of the acronym was even emphasized by a hyphen at the borders of the two words included in the acronym (WORT-KLAU). This improved the resilience toward interruptions at the border step of the procedure significantly. Our results provide evidence for beneficial effects of mnemonic acronym particularly for the learning of a sequential procedural task. In addition, they suggest that the structure of mnemonic acronym directly impacts the mental representation of a task. Finally, they show that mnemonic acronyms could be used to improve the resilience toward detrimental effect of interruptions, at least at certain task steps of a procedural task.

Keywords: interruptions, sequential task, resumption time, goal activation, sequential error, mnemonic technique, acronym, procedure learning

Introduction

Accomplishing a complex task in everyday life or professional settings often requires to remember how to conduct a procedure that consists of a sequence of steps, which have to be performed in a predefined order. A simple example from everyday life is the sequence of actions needed to make boiled eggs. To get the eggs right, one needs to follow a sequence of steps, and any commission of sequence errors that is deviating from the right order (e.g., putting the eggs in the water before it boils) or omitting to perform a step (e.g., missing to pierce the egg before putting it in the boiling water) may compromise the result. Admittedly, the procedure to cook eggs is fairly easy and consequences of sequence errors in this example are only minor. However, there are other (professional) settings where committing sequence errors while performing a procedural task can have much more serious consequences. Examples are the execution of procedures by pilots on the flight deck, by physicians in an emergency department, or by nurses providing medication in a hospital. Here committing an error may have fatal consequences, which can hardly be corrected, and this risk is even elevated in case of interruptions which have frequently been observed in these settings ( Latorella, 1996; Dismukes et al., 1998; Drews, 2007; Scott-Cawiezell et al., 2007; Westbrook et al., 2010). As a countermeasure ensuring the correct execution of procedural tasks and making them more resilient toward interruptions, they often are supported by different sorts of checklists, which shall reduce memory demands and prevent the commission of sequence errors, primarily the missing of important steps ( Latorella, 1999; Loukopoulos et al., 2001, 2003). However, checklists are not always available and there are number of instances where even important and safety-critical procedures have to be performed based on memory only (i.e., so called memory items in aviation, Hunt, 1988; Au, 2005). This provides a number of cognitive challenges similar to order memory and serial recall (e.g., Henson, 1998; Hurlstone et al., 2014), including initial learning of the sequence, retaining the sequence across time, and, most important, retrieving the correct order of steps once the procedure has to be executed. According to some authors, the latter is assumed to involve a so-called placekeeping process, i.e., monitoring the progress within a procedural task by keeping track of completed and to-be-executed steps ( Carlson and Cassenti, 2004; Trafton et al., 2011; Hambrick and Altmann, 2015).

Research from serial learning and recall suggest that these challenges might effectively be supported by the use of mnemonic techniques. It has been shown that the support in organizing the to-be-remembered material in the learning phase enhances learning, has long-term effect on retention of material, and leads to better performance in the recall phase by providing hierarchical organization of the learnt material (e.g., Miller, 1956; Bower, 1970; Bellezza, 1981; Malhotra, 1991; Higbee, 2001). One such technique is the administration of mnemonic acronyms, i.e., pronounceable phrases or words where each letter represents an item that has to be remembered in the order given by the phrase (e.g., first letter mnemonic; Malhotra, 1991; Higbee, 2001). Use of acronyms for memorizing items in a serial order is widely present in education ( Cook, 1989; Miller and Mercer, 1993; Stalder, 2005), and in clinical practice ( Bortle, 2010). Also, it was found that people voluntary develop acronyms and organize information in chunks ( Cook, 1989; Bower, 1970; Blick and Waite, 1971; Blick et al., 1972; Gruneberg, 1973; Bortle, 2010), which also points to the potentially positive effects of such mnemonic for order learning and recall.

Applied to procedural tasks that need to be performed from memory, the provision of acronyms composed of letters which represent the different steps might have at least three beneficial effects. First, it might enhance learning, retention, and retrieval of the steps in correct order. This is suggested by early studies demonstrating advantages of mnemonic acronyms on the learning and reproduction of verbal material ( Nelson and Archer, 1972; Stalder, 2005). Positive effects of mnemonic acronyms were shown particularly in situations where the order of items had to be learned and retrieved ( Nelson and Archer, 1972; Morris and Cook, 1978), whereas usually no effects were found where the identity of individual items needed to be retrieved ( Nelson and Archer, 1972; Morris and Cook, 1978; Carlson et al., 1981). The specific benefit of mnemonic acronyms for memorization of item order, but not item identity, might account for inconsistent findings regarding positive effects of mnemonic acronyms in verbal learning ( Boltwood and Blick, 1970; Gruneberg, 1973; Cook, 1989). For that reason, it seems at least plausible that the availability of acronyms would also support learning the correct order of different steps constituting a procedural task.

Second, the availability of an acronym might also increase the execution speed of the different steps of a procedural task, i.e., serve as a process mnemonic tool ( Higbee, 1987; Manalo, 2002). This is expected, because the availability of a pronounceable acronym provides a cuing structure whose inherent links between the different letters might strengthen the associations between successive steps ( Malhotra, 1991), which in turn could improve the transfer between the steps, leading to an overall increase of speed and accuracy in the execution phase.

Third, it can be assumed that mnemonic acronyms might enhance the resilience of a sequential procedural task toward adverse effects of interruptions. Adverse effects of interruptions, that is, additional time needed to resume a primary task after an interruption ( resumption time) and elevated risk of committing sequence errors (i.e., skipping or repeating a step), have often been reported when resuming the primary task. Among other factors, the interruption effects depend on the length and complexity of the interruption task ( Hodgetts and Jones, 2006; Cades et al., 2007; Monk et al., 2008, see for a review Trafton and Monk, 2007). These effects are often interpreted within the memory for goals model proposed by Altmann and Trafton (2002). The model states that task goals need to be activated in working memory in order to perform a cognitive task. Assuming that cognitive goals underlie the same constraints as other items in working memory, active strengthening is required to reach and maintain sufficient level of activation in order to retrieve the goals successfully. Interruptions of a procedural task cause a decrease of the activation of related task goals, unless the goals are rehearsed while performing the interruption task. Thus, in order to resume the procedural task at the correct position after an interruption, the position within the task needs to be rehearsed during the interruption, and the activation level of the goal related to the correct task step needs to be elevated again, based on internal or external cues. It seems plausible that mnemonic acronyms could provide simple internal cues (e.g., letters instead of words or sentences) for rehearsal and re-activation of task steps, and consequently enhance goal activation in memory. Thus, mnemonic acronyms could be helpful during an interruption, when the goals of the primary task have to be rehearsed in parallel with the execution of the interruption task, as well as after the interruption, when reorienting and re-activation of the primary task goals take place. These effects should be reflected in decreased resumption times and in a decreased risk of sequence errors after interruptions, compared to a situation where no acronym is available.

Given these possible advantages and the available evidence for specific benefits of mnemonic acronyms in terms of order memorization, the provision of mnemonic acronyms to support learning, retention, and retrieval of procedural tasks with sequential constraints seems to be promising. Despite the examples of the use of acronyms to remember and retrieve the correct sequence of steps in a procedure (e.g., decision making procedures, Hörmann, 1994), the performance consequences of this mnemonic technique on learning and execution of procedural tasks were not examined in a systematic manner, thus far, to the best of our knowledge.

A new experimental paradigm, the UNRAVEL paradigm, which principally seems to be suitable to address this question, was recently introduced by Altmann et al. (2014). UNRAVEL is an acronym where each letter represents a step that needs to be executed in response to a complex stimulus, with the letter sequence cueing the correct order of steps of the sequence. The complex task stimuli in this paradigm are composed of a letter, a number, and a box with different features (e.g., font, color, location). The different steps that have to be performed from memory in correct order include responses to a total of seven questions concerning the features of the given stimulus. Thus far, this paradigm has primarily been used to study consequences of interruptions on serial task performance ( Altmann et al., 2014, 2017; Altmann and Trafton, 2015). For this purpose, the UNRAVEL task was repeatedly interrupted between steps by a simple interruption task. In order to investigate the performance consequences of these interruptions, the time needed to resume the task (resumption time), the number of sequence errors (i.e., instances where the task was resumed at the incorrect step), and the number of non-sequence errors (i.e., instances where the task was resumed at the correct step, but with the wrong response) were assessed. The obtained results replicated the standard effects in interruption research, namely that the adverse effects of interruptions, i.e., prolonged resumption times and an elevated risk to commit a sequence error, become worse with increasing duration of the interruption task ( Altmann et al., 2017). In addition, two aspects of the results suggest that the mnemonic acronym supporting the task, might have made a difference in performing this task. First, even though the UNRAVEL task poses comparatively high memory demands, the observed rates of sequence errors after interruptions were surprisingly low (4-16%), and essentially in the same range or only somewhat higher than the ones usually obtained with much less demanding primary tasks and comparable durations of short interruptions (e.g., Monk et al., 2008). This suggests that the availability of the acronym could have compensated for the higher memory demands of the UNRAVEL task, compared to a condition where the acronym would not have been available. Second, an analysis of performance at different steps of the UNRAVEL task revealed an interesting incidental finding. Namely, the risk of sequence errors was relatively low particularly for the first (U) and last (L) step of the task whereas more sequence errors were committed at the middle steps, even when no interruption preceded the step directly. The authors suggest that the obtained patterns were due to the mnemonic acronym and its structure, which, they assume, have organized the task hierarchically in accordance with the word boundaries of the acronym ( Altmann et al., 2014). However, since no control condition (i.e., without an acronym) was included in this interruption research, any conclusions concerning the possible effect of the acronym on interruption performance seem to be hardly conclusive based on the available data of this previous work.

As far as we are aware, there is actually only one UNRAVEL study, thus far, which had included a no-acronym control group. However, this study did not focus directly on the impact of an acronym as mnemonic on performance ( Hambrick et al., 2018 1. Instead, it addressed how individual differences in general ability impacted performance in a placekeeping task with vs. without activation of task-relevant knowledge. Despite the different aims of that study, a look at the data of the different conditions at least suggest that the no-acronym condition was somewhat more demanding than the acronym condition, as participants in the no-acronym group more often consulted the help option than in the acronym group. No differences in overall mean response times (RTs) and rates of sequence error were found between the conditions, though, which is in contrast to the assumption of a generally beneficial mnemonic effect of an acronym on the execution of a serial task. However, because the specific effects of a mnemonic on performance in serial tasks were not the primary aim of this study, the authors just used very general performance measures, not addressing any specific effects of the mnemonic on, for example, learning times, and resilience toward interruptions or task representation. Thus, the conclusions of this study must be considered as very limited with respect to the performance consequences of acronym mnemonics on serial task performance.

The current research aims at a first systematic investigation on the performance effects of a mnemonic acronym vs. no-acronym on learning and performing a procedural task with sequential constraints. For this purpose, we used a German adaptation of the UNRAVEL task and contrasted conditions with and without the mnemonic regarding three different aspects: the time needed for learning the task, the speed and accuracy of executing the task without an interruption, and the potential of the acronym to structure the task and to enhance the resilience of the task (or at least certain steps) toward detrimental performance effects after an interruption. Our adaptation of the UNRAVEL task used a similar task stimulus to the one used by Altmann et al. (2014), but included a total of eight instead of seven task steps, which had to be performed in a certain order. In the acronym condition, the sequence of tasks building the procedure was represented by the acronym WORTKLAU, consisting of two single one-syllable German words, i.e., "Wort" (engl. word) and "Klau" (engl. theft). Enlarging the procedure to eight steps and using the 2-word acronym was chosen to make the task even more complex and to have an acronym with a salient semantic structure including a central position marked by word boundaries.

In the first experiment, participants performed the primary task either with the support of the acronym (from the learning phase on) or without an acronym. In the latter case, they had to learn the eight steps and their order without any sort of mnemonic technique provided. During performance of the task, we further varied whether or not interruptions of two different lengths occurred at different steps. First, we expected shorter learning times in the acronym condition compared to the condition where no acronym was available. Second, we predicted that having a support of a mnemonic acronym would lead to faster and more accurate execution of the whole sequence of steps compared to the situation without the acronym. This was expected based on the assumption that the sequential associations between steps would be improved by the availability of the acronym. Third, we assumed that availability of the mnemonic acronym would improve the resilience toward interruptions, namely, that resumption times would be faster, and sequence errors at the first step after an interruption would be less frequent, compared to the no-acronym condition. Based on the assumption that acronyms indeed facilitate the rehearsal of where the primary task was interrupted and also provide a salient internal cue to re-activate the task goal at the correct step, this effect should occur independently of the length and position of an interruption. Finally, we assumed that the inherent semantic structure of the acronym would also organize the cognitive representation of the task. That is, we assumed that the mnemonic acronym consisting of two words would facilitate a sort of chunking, i.e., dividing the procedural task into two subunits in accordance with the word boundaries within the acronym. In that case, this should be reflected in a faster learning time and an even higher resilience toward interruption effects, particularly for interruptions occurring at the central position, compared to interruptions elsewhere during the task. This is suggested by the observations of position effects in the UNRAVEL paradigm and previous findings that interruptions are less disruptive if they occur after the completion of subtasks compared to the ones positioned within subtasks ( Monk et al., 2002, 2004; Botvinick and Bylsma, 2005; Bailey and Konstan, 2006). Whereas the results of the first experiment allowed for an evaluation of most of these hypotheses, the observed effects were somewhat ambiguous with respect to the effects of the acronym on the mental representation of the task. Thus, a second experiment was run, in which the inherent structure of the acronym was made even more salient by use of a hyphen ("WORT-KLAU").

Experiment 1

Materials and Methods

Participants

Seventy four university students, ranging in age from 18 to 30, participated in the study. They were randomly assigned to two groups. 36 participants (23 female, 11 male; M = 24.97, SD = 2.97) performed the task with support of an acronym and the remaining 38 participants (24 female, 14 male; M = 25.16, SD = 2.85) performed the task without an acronym. A sample size of 32 participants per group was determined, based on a G-power sample size calculator ( Faul et al., 2007) for α = 0.05, power of 0.95, and an effect size of 0.20. Such effect size is in the range of previously reported effect sizes for main performance effects of interruption presence and length (e.g., Altmann et al., 2014, 2017). However, no predictions regarding the sizes of specific effects of providing an acronym could be drawn from previous studies and, thus, were only assumed to be in the same range. Participants were recruited through a web portal of Technische Universität Berlin. For participation in the experiment, a course credit or monetary compensation were offered.

Tasks

The primary task was a German adaptation of the UNRAVEL task introduced by Altmann et al. (2014). It follows the same general approach and objectives as the original task, but also takes into account experiences of previous research with this task ( Altmann et al., 2014; Altmann and Trafton, 2015). As the UNRAVEL task, the German version also requires participants to respond to a complex stimulus with a number of sequential responses which have to be performed from memory in a predefined order. The stimuli of the primary task correspond to the original stimuli of the UNRAVEL task, with features adapted to a new and enlarged set of choice rules that have to be applied in a given sequence without any cues. That is, each stimulus consists of a dot, a number (1, 2, 3, or 9), a letter (A, B, U, or X) and a box, which differ according to eight different features: color of the dot (white or black), font style of the number (underlined or not), color of the letter/number (red or blue), position of the letter/number outside of the box (above or below), sound of letter (consonant or vowel), font style of the box (dotted or lined), position of the letter in the alphabet (near to the beginning or the end), and parity of the number (odd or even) (see Figure 1 ).

In response to the stimulus, the participant has to go through a sequential list of eight choice rules, corresponding to the different features, and to type the correct responses in a standard keyboard in a prescribed order. As a mnemonic technique to support learning, retention, and correct execution of the sequence, the WORTKLAU acronym was used. It can be considered as a sort of a first-letter mnemonic representing the sequence of operations of the primary task by the respective first letter of one of the response options, corresponding to the logic of the acronym in the UNRAVEL task. The choice rules, the corresponding responses and the association with the acronym are shown in Table 1 .

Compared to the UNRAVEL paradigm, the number of steps to be performed in response to each stimulus has been enlarged by one to a total of eight steps in the German WORTKLAU adaptation. This difference has two important consequences: the memory demands of the WORTKLAU task are even higher than in the UNRAVEL task and the acronym is composed of two single words of the same length (i.e., WORT and KLAU; corresponding to the English words word and theft), which provides a semantic structure to the acronym by dividing it in two parts. The latter makes it possible to study possible effects of the acronym structure on the task execution in a controlled way.

A numerical 2-back task ( Moore and Ross, 1963) was used as interruption task. In this task, participants are presented with series of single numbers and need to respond when a presented number equals the one presented two places before. The task places relatively high demands on working memory by requiring a running memory update with each new number presented. It has been used in other interruption research before in order to suppress or at least hinder active rehearsal of where an interruption occurred in a primary task (e.g., Monk et al., 2004, 2008).

Procedure

Participants were tested individually in the Human Performance Laboratory of the Chair of Work, Engineering and Organizational Psychology at Technische Universität Berlin. After signing an informed consent and filling in a demographic questionnaire addressing basic biographic characteristics (e.g., age) and relevant experiences (e.g., typing skills), participants were introduced to the WORTKLAU task. In the no-acronym group, the pre-defined order of choice rules was presented, but the sequence of response options was mixed so that forming an acronym from them was not obvious. In contrast, the acronym group was introduced to the mnemonic acronym as support for memorizing the different choice rules in the correct order. Afterward, in both groups followed a short practice phase including five trials of the task, which had to be performed with support of a handout describing the sequence of choices to be made. Immediate feedback on accuracy was provided on the screen after each response. After the practice trials, participants continued with reading of instructions and familiarizing with the interruption task. After the 2-back interruption task was introduced, a short practice trial (1 min) followed.

After this familiarization phase, participants had to pass a knowledge test addressing the procedure and choice rules of the sequential WORTKLAU task. However, before taking this test they could take as much time as they needed to learn the sequence. Participants, who then passed the knowledge test, directly proceeded to the final training without feedback, which consisted of eight WORTKLAU trials with five trials being interrupted after different steps. All other participants got additional learning time before they repeated the knowledge test and could start with the final training block. All participants passed the knowledge test at the second try.

After the final training block, participants had a short break that was followed by the experimental data collection. This main part of the experiment consisted of three experimental blocks, with 24 WORTKLAU trials per block, i.e., 72 trials in total. In each block, 20 trials were interrupted. Interruptions could occur at five different positions in the WORTKLAU sequence (i.e., before steps R, T, K, L, A), each interruption lasting for either 6 or 30 s. That is, each Position × Length combination of interruptions was presented twice per block. The remaining four trials per block, i.e., 12 trials in total, were not interrupted. These were used for assessing effects of the acronym on uninterrupted performance and also used as baseline for calculating interruption effects. Interrupted and uninterrupted trials were mixed randomly. Participants were instructed to proceed as quickly and accurately as possible through the different steps of the WORTKLAU task. In case of errors, they should not correct them, but continue working through the sequence. The interruption task always appeared immediately upon the response to one of the steps of the WORTKLAU task, and replaced the WORTKLAU stimulus fully. During the 2-back interruption task, one number at a time was presented in the center of the screen as a part of short (4 items) or long (20 items) series with a presentation rate of 1.5 s. Immediately after the last item of the 2-back series, the stimulus of the primary task was presented again, and participants were required to resume the primary task as soon as possible at the correct step, i.e., the step that should have followed the last performed step before the interruption. After the last step of a trial in the primary task was performed and before the new stimulus was shown, a blank screen appeared for 300 ms. On average, a complete experimental session lasted 90 min. Before leaving, with each participant a structured interview was conducted, which addressed strategies they used for learning and execution of the task (e.g., "Did you try to divide the task sequence into different parts?," "Was any position for you especially easy to resume after an interruption?"). In addition, participants subjectively assessed their own performance in the primary and the interruption tasks on simple four-point Likert scales.

Design

For examining the effects of a mnemonic acronym on learning times, on overall performance in the uninterrupted trials of the primary task, and on post-interruption performance, we contrasted the performance in the acronym group working with support of the WORTKLAU acronym, with the performance in the no-acronym (control) group.

For investigating the effects of the mnemonic acronym on resilience toward interruptions a 2 (Group) × 2 (Length) × 5 (Position) mixed factorial design was used. The first factor was defined as a between-subjects factor representing the acronym and no-acronym groups. The second factor was defined as a within-subjects factor, representing the length of interruption (6 vs. 30 s). The third factor was again a within-subjects factor and included five levels corresponding to the position in the sequence of response where an interruption occurred (before steps R, T, K, L, A).

Dependent Variables

A set of overall eight performance measures were used to assess the impact of the acronym on different aspects of performance including learning, performance during uninterrupted trials, and consequences of interruptions:

Results

A total of nine participants were excluded from further analyses for either systematic non-sequence errors in the K step (consonant-vowel) of the trial, for using non-mnemonic strategies to conduct the task (i.e., fingers pointing to the correct answer at the keyboard during the interruption), or for inability to analyze all reaction times per situation due to the high number of errors. Thus, the results presented in the following are based on the data of 33 participants in the acronym group and 32 participants in the no-acronym group. The two groups neither differed in age [ M = 24.97 in the acronym and M = 25.38 in the no-acronym group, t(63) = 0.55, p = 0.58], nor in their proficiency of typing skills [2.73 vs. 2.94, t(61.62) = 1.18, p = 0.24]. In addition, the two groups also did not differ with respect of their subjective rating of their performance in the primary task [2.94 vs. 3.03, t(64) = 0.64, p = 0.52] and in the interruption task [2.21 vs. 2.34, t(64) = 0.88, p = 0.38].

With regard to RT measures in the uninterrupted trials, all RT shorter than 500 ms or larger than 3 standard deviations (SD) from the mean, calculated for each step and each participant, were excluded, resulting in excluding 0.03% RTs in the acronym group, and 0.05% in the no-acronym group. For post-interruption, RTs (between the re-occurrence of the primary task stimulus after interruption and the first response), also all times shorter than 500 ms were excluded, resulting in exclusion of 0.03% in the acronym and 0.04% in the no-acronym group.

Learning Time

Uninterrupted Primary-Task Performance

A complete overview of the performance measures calculated for each step of the primary task in the uninterrupted condition, together with the three derived overall performance scores on trial level are shown in Table 2 .

Performance in Interrupted Trials

An overview of performance measures calculated for each post-interruption step of the primary task in the conditions with short and long interruptions is shown in Table 3 .

Post-experimental Interview

Discussion

The aims of the present research were to investigate effects of the availability of a mnemonic acronym on learning and execution of a procedural task, the resilience toward detrimental effects of interruptions, and the impact of the structure of a mnemonic acronym on the mental representation of the task.

Let us first consider the effects of learning and execution of the eight-step procedure in the uninterrupted trials. Based on knowledge gained from research on memory for order ( Nelson and Archer, 1972; Morris and Cook, 1978), beneficial effects of the mnemonic acronym were expected to emerge in the time needed to learn the procedure. In accordance with this hypothesis, the acronym group acquired the procedure significantly faster than the no-acronym group. This finding is in line with previous research on memory for order, showing positive effects of mnemonic acronyms on memorization of the order of verbal items ( Morris and Cook, 1978). However, no beneficial effects of the acronym were found with respect to completion time and error rates, confirming recent observations in the study of Hambrick et al. (2018). Thus, our additional hypothesis that mnemonic acronyms might also serve as process mnemonics that promote speed and accuracy of task execution through strengthening associations between the steps of the procedure ( Malhotra, 1991) was not supported by the data. Obviously, once the procedure was learnt, no additional benefit of the cuing structure was provided by the mnemonic acronym during the actual execution. This suggests that mnemonic acronyms can serve well as learning mnemonics supporting the establishment of declarative knowledge concerning the set and sequence of rules of a sequential task. However, the transfer of this knowledge to the actual active execution of the task ( Kieras and Bovair, 1986) does not seem to be supported further by the availability of a mnemonic acronym.

A second aim of the experiment addressed possible effects of mnemonic acronyms on the resilience of executing procedures toward interruptions. More specifically, we assumed that acronyms would generally improve the rehearsal of where in the sequence the interruption occurred and provide cues for a better re-activation of the correct step to-be-performed next after the interruption. The results did not support this assumption, as no differences between the groups were found in terms of overall resumption times and post-interruption sequence errors. This was also reflected in the subjective ratings of primary task and interruption task performance where no significant differences emerged between the two groups. However, the finding of the explorative analysis regarding the different relationship between the accuracy in the interruption task and resumption time in the two groups revealed a more subtle effect of the mnemonic acronym, which suggests that the availability of a mnemonic might have facilitated the rehearsal of primary task goals during the interruption phase. Nonetheless, in the no-acronym group participants who were more accurate in the interruption task needed more time to resume the primary task after the interruption and vice versa, and no such mutual dependence was found in the acronym group. This suggests that the mnemonic acronym could have provided simple rehearsal cues, which helped to reduce possible interference effects between performing the 2-back task and rehearsal of the primary task goal during the interruption phase, i.e., allowed for similar resumption performance independent of how much priority was given to the performance in the 2-back task.

Finally, we expected that the structure of the acronym would affect the mental representation of the task. More specifically, we assumed that the word boundaries included in the acronym consisting of two words (WORT, KLAU) would lead to a chunking of the procedure in at least two parts, based on the meaning of the words within the acronym. This then should be reflected in faster and more accurate post-interruption performance at the central step of the procedure compared to the others. No such effects were expected in the no-acronym group. The results do not seem to be fully conclusive in this regard. Based on the post-experiment interview, the vast majority participants (about 80%) in the acronym group deliberately used the semantic structure of the acronym in one way or the other to divide the procedure in different chunks, whereas only a minority of participants in the no-acronym group reported to do so. Albeit this is in general accordance with our hypothesis, it was not as clearly reflected in the performance data. Here, a significant Group × Position effect emerged for resumption times, but was not easy to explain since also marked differences at positions other than the central position might have contributed to this effect. Furthermore, no comparable effect was found for the post-interruption sequence errors. Thus, before accepting the hypothesis that providing mnemonic acronyms as a tool to structure the mental representation of tasks, we conducted a second experiment where we made the word boundary within the acronym WORTKLAU even more salient.

Experiment 2

The results of the first experiment provided some evidence that the semantic structure of the mnemonic acronym affected the mental representation of the task. In order to investigate this possible effect further, we even emphasized the word boundary of the acronym WOTKLAU by introducing a hyphen between the words WORT and KLAU of the acronym in the learning. We expected that such subtle, but salient manipulation would be more effective than just the internal semantic structure of the acronym to structure the mental representation of the task in two halves, corresponding to the word boundary in the central position of the acronym. During the execution of the task, this should be reflected in a considerable higher resilience toward interruptions, specifically reflected in clearly reduced resumption times and sequence error rates for interruptions taking place at the central position (i.e., before step "K") than all other positions. However, learning times and performance at uninterrupted trials of the primary task are expected to remain unaffected and to replicate the results obtained in Experiment 1 for the acronym group.

Materials and Methods

Participants

Twenty university students (seven female; M = 25.65, SD = 3.31), ranging in age from 19 to 30, participated in the study. Participants were recruited through a web portal of Technische Universität Berlin. For participation in the experiment, a course credit or monetary compensation were offered.

Task and Procedure

Tasks and procedure were the same as in the acronym group in Experiment 1. The only difference regarded the learning phase of the experiment, where the acronym "WORTKLAU" was replaced with "WORT-KLAU."

Design

For investigating effects of the mnemonic acronym with salient central position on resilience toward interruptions a 2 (Length) × 5 (Position) within-subjects factorial design was used. The first factor was defined as a within-subjects factor, representing the duration of interruption (6 vs. 30 s). The second factor was another within-subjects factor and included five levels corresponding to the position in the sequence of response where an interruption occurred.

Dependent Variables

Learning times, uninterrupted primary-task performance measures (completion time, sequence, and non-sequence errors), and post-interruption performance measures (resumption times, post-interruption sequence and non-sequence errors, and interruption task performance) were calculated in the same way as in Experiment 1. In addition, the same explorative and control variables as in the first experiment were included, i.e., percentages of different chunking strategies deliberately applied, subjective ratings of performance in the primary and in the interruption tasks, age, and subjective ratings of typing proficiency.

Results

Due to a high number of errors, leading to missing resumption times in certain conditions, one participant was excluded from the further analyses. The mean subjective ratings of typing speed, primary task performance and interruption task performance of the remaining participants were 2.74 ( SE = 0.13), 3.0 (.13) and 2.21 (.14), and, thus, replicated the mean ratings of the acronym group of the first experiment almost exactly (2.73; 2.94; 2.21, respectively). Applying the same criteria for outlier correction as in Experiment 1, in total 0.02% single values were excluded from RTs in uninterrupted trials, and 0.02% values from the post-interruption RTs.

Learning Time and Uninterrupted Primary-Task Performance

Performance in Interrupted Trials

Post-experimental Interview

Discussion

The main objective of Experiment 2 was to examine the effects of a more salient semantic structuring of the mnemonic acronym on the mental representation of the sequential WORTKLAU task. Compared to the acronym used in the first experiment, the two-word structure of the acronym was made more salient by simply including a hyphen at the boundary between the two words WORT and KLAU. It was expected that this would lead to a structured mental representation of the WORTKLAU task, consisting of two parts, represented by the word. This, in turn, was expected to make the task more resilient toward interruptions at the central position, reflected in shorter resumption times and less sequence errors when resuming the primary task after interruptions at the central position, compared to interruption at other steps. The obtained results provide support for this hypothesis. Independent of the length of interruptions, and more clearly visible than in the first experiment, the primary task was resumed faster and more accurately after the interruptions at the central compared to the mean of all other positions. This effect was most marked for long interruptions, where the mean rate of post-interruption sequence errors at the central position dropped to only 8%. For short interruptions, the rates of post-interruption sequence errors were relatively low anyway, but actually zero for all participants at the central position. Taken together, these results confirm the findings obtained in the acronym group of Experiment 1, which already suggested that the semantic structure of an acronym provided as a mnemonic for a sequential task might also affect the structure of mental representation of the task. The fact that this effect was more strongly reflected in the performance measures than in the subjective reports of the participants concerning the use of a deliberately chosen strategy suggest that it can occur without becoming subjectively aware.

General Discussion

The aim of the present study was to examine the potential of a mnemonic acronym to serve as a learning mnemonic for a sequential procedural task, and to serve as a process mnemonic during the task execution. Moreover, the goal was to investigate the potential of a mnemonic acronym to improve overall resilience toward interruptions by providing an easily accessible cue for rehearsal, as well as to improve resilience toward interruptions at certain steps by providing a structure to the mental representation on the procedure. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has addressed these questions directly in a systematic way.

The results of the two experiments provide direct empirical evidence for the beneficial effects of a mnemonic acronym as a support tool for learning. The two groups provided with different versions of the WORTKLAU acronym in the learning phase needed approximately 5 min less (on average) to learn the rules of the sequential procedure, compared to the participants of Experiment 1 who learned the sequence without the help of an acronym. These effects are in line with early studies on mnemonic acronyms that showed their positive effects in learning and reproduction of verbal material (e.g., Higbee, 2001; Stalder, 2005), especially when the order of items needs to be memorized ( Nelson and Archer, 1972; Morris and Cook, 1978), which was the key property of the task in our experiment. The effects suggest that the knowledge gained from serial verbal learning can be transferred directly to the learning of sequential procedural tasks, involving different steps to be performed in prescribed order. However, at least partially, the positive effects may also be explained by the structure of the complex WORTKLAU acronym, which could have enhanced the chunking of the task during learning and execution. Within each experimental group in both experiments, the subgroup that chunked the task was somewhat faster in learning compared to the subgroup that did not report such strategy. Although this difference only emerged descriptively and should not be overemphasized, it at least suggests that learning times in the acronym group did not only benefit from the support of the acronym as cue for coding the order and content of choice rules, but also from its structure supporting a hierarchical task organization. In addition, it cannot be excluded that also indirect benefits of the mnemonic acronyms, e.g., increase motivation to work on the task ( Stalder, 2005), might have contributed to the faster learning times in the acronym group.

A more advanced assumption involved the hypothesis that the mnemonic acronym might also serve as a process mnemonic improving the speed and accuracy of a procedural task execution. That is, we expected that the mnemonic acronym would provide a cuing structure, which strengthened the associations between successive steps of the task ( Malhotra, 1991). In that case, a faster and more accurate execution of the task sequence would be enabled. This expectation was mainly based on observational and field studies reporting the benefits of mnemonic acronyms for supporting learning, teaching, and executing of procedures ( Cook, 1989; Stalder, 2005; Bortle, 2010). However, the data of the two experiments do not support this assumption. In neither experiment, the groups performing the primary task with support of the acronym did outperform the control group of Experiment 1 when performing the task in uninterrupted trials, i.e., both groups achieved the same levels of speed and accuracy. This suggests that the mnemonic acronym did only support the establishment of declarative knowledge in long-term memory, but failed to further support the transfer of the memorized sequence of rules in the sequence of response selections and actions required for the actual execution ( Kieras and Bovair, 1986). Theoretically, the execution of such sequential, procedural task is proposed to rely on mechanisms involved in order memory and serial recall (single mechanism theories, e.g., Burgess and Hitch, 1999; Brown et al., 2000; Botvinick and Plaut, 2006) or on a specific placekeeping ability involving two mechanisms - episodic and semantic memory ( Trafton et al., 2011; Hambrick and Altmann, 2015). Both groups of theories propose chain associations between the steps, where the execution of one step serves as a prime for the activation and execution of following steps. The results of the present study suggest that, once a sequential procedural task is learnt, with or without the support of an acronym, the sequential associations between successive steps are already strong enough to serve this assumed cueing and priming mechanisms sufficiently, rendering all additional effects of an acronym negligible.

A third set of assumptions concerned the possible effects of a mnemonic acronym to improve the resilience of a procedural task toward interruptions and to affect the structure of mental representation of the task. A general higher resilience toward interruptions was expected based on the assumption that rehearsal of a pending goal during the interruption task would be enhanced by a simple internal cue provided by the acronym, leading to elevated activation of the primary task goal during the interruption ( Altmann and Trafton, 2002). In addition, we assumed that the acronym might provide effective cues for reorienting and re-activation the correct step of the primary task after an interruption. However, no differences in post-interruption measures, neither resumption times nor sequence errors, were found between the acronym and the no-acronym group of Experiment 1. This suggests that a mnemonic acronym does not contribute to a better prevention of goal decay during the interruption phase, nor does it seem to be especially helpful as a cue for reactivating the primary task goal after the interruption. However, the observation that the performance in the interruption task and the time needed to resume the primary task were positively correlated across participants in the no-acronym (Experiment 1), but not across participants of the two acronym groups (Experiments 1, 2) suggests that the mnemonic acronym nevertheless affected the rehearsal processes in the interruption phase in some way. More specifically, it enabled participants to better uncouple the processes involved in the 2-back task from rehearsing the relevant primary task goals. Why such effect would not lead to better resumption performance is difficult to explain, though, and the interpretation should be considered with some caution, given that the correlations were based on relatively small number of participants in the different groups and a restricted variance of interruption task performance especially in the two acronym groups.

Even more specific effects on the resilience toward interruptions were expected due to the potential impact of the mnemonic acronym on the organization of the mental representation of a procedural task established during learning. Specifically, it was assumed that the semantic structure of an acronym would guide a sort of hierarchical mental task representation, which in turn would make a procedural task more resilient toward interruption at task steps representing a boundary in the semantic structure of the acronym. This assumption was supported by the data of both experiments. In the first experiment, post-interruption performance in terms of resumption times was better when the interruption was placed between the two separate words building the acronym, compared to interruptions at other steps. When the boundary between the acronym words were made even more salient (Experiment 2), the effect was replicated in both resumption times and post-interruption sequence errors. This finding is in line with previous studies, which examined the relationship between the hierarchical structure of a task and interruption effects ( Monk et al., 2002, 2004; Botvinick and Bylsma, 2005; Bailey and Konstan, 2006). They usually found interruptions being less detrimental for performance, if they occurred between subtasks compared to within subtasks. These results were explained by reduced mental workload at subtask boundaries, resulting from previous subtask completion and not yet fully processing the incoming one ( Miyata and Norman, 1986; Wickens, 2002). Based on our research, it appears that mnemonic acronyms can induce a hierarchical mental organization of a complex procedural task with sequential constraints in different subtasks even if the task per se does not have such structure. However, considering the effect of this hierarchical organization on the resilience toward interruptions one should keep in mind that these effects were considerably smaller compared to the impact of interruption length. Whereas the observed sizes of the effects of position of interruptions ranged between 0.06 and 0.3 across the two experiments, the different lengths of interruptions produced considerable larger effects (0.63-0.70), which could not be completely attenuated by help of the mnemonic in either of the two experiments.

The interruptions in our experiments primarily were used to specifically assess the possible effects of mnemonic acronyms on the resilience of a procedural task toward interruptions. Apart from this, our results also contribute to interruption research in general. Independent of whether or not the mnemonic acronym was available, most of the performance consequences of interruptions previously described from research with the UNRAVEL tasks ( Altmann et al., 2014, 2017) were confirmed again in our experiments. That is, resumption times and proportion of post-interruption sequence errors increased depending on the length of interruptions, with mean rates of sequence errors after short and long interruptions closely resembling the ones reported by Altmann et al. (2014, 2017). In addition, the somewhat higher prevalence of erroneous repetition of steps (perseveration errors) versus skipping of steps (anticipation errors) after interrupted compared to uninterrupted steps, previously reported by Altmann et al. (2014) is replicated in our research. This provides converging evidence for these phenomena to cross-validate the previous findings obtained in the UNRAVEL task using our modified German adaptation combined with a different interruption task.

Altogether, to our knowledge, the current study is one of the first attempts to examine extensively effects of mnemonic acronym on learning and execution of procedural task with sequential constraints, as well as resilience toward interruptions in an experimental setting. The results provide support for implementing mnemonic acronyms in the learning phase of a procedural task, as they can promote faster learning. However, once the task is learnt, no additional benefit of the acronym on plain execution of the task would be expected. Furthermore, it seems that a mnemonic acronym can also affect the mental representation of a serial task by dividing it in subtasks, which in turn may lead to a higher resilience toward interruptions at subtask borders. Thus, overall, the results provide evidence of limited and specific advantages of mnemonic acronyms in context of procedural tasks, which should be further consolidated in future research. Moreover, the finding that a hierarchically organized mental representation of a procedural task can help to make this task more resilient toward interruptions at certain positions also raises the question about other ways to achieve such organization. Besides providing mnemonic acronyms, for example, also a segmented learning of a procedure by organizing the steps in pairs or subgroups, or a temporal grouping similar to the one applied in previous research on memory for serial order (e.g., Parmentier and Maybery, 2008) might provide options to yield a hierarchical representation of a task and might be considered in future research.

Limitations of the current study involve the typical limitations of laboratory studies. Our participants were university students, who might be considered to represent an already highly selected population with respect to the level of their cognitive capabilities. However, in the context of the current study this might have made it rather more difficult to find beneficial effects of a mnemonic acronym. In addition, the WORTKLAU task used in our research to simulate a procedural task with sequential constraints certainly is an abstract laboratory task. We just assume that the cognitive demands of this task closely resemble the ones needed in many procedural tasks in everyday environments and applied settings. Nevertheless, the consequences of committing errors in task execution were not quite comparable to typical tasks outside the laboratory. Thus, further research should show whether the effects found in this research can be replicated with more representative samples and more realistic tasks in relevant field settings.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Institute for Psychology and Ergonomics, Technische Universtät Berlin [Die Ethik-Kommission des Instituts für Psychologie und Arbeitswissenschaft (IPA) der TU Berlin]. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

TR and DM conceived the idea, planned the experiments, and contributed to the analysis of the results and writing of the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant Number: MA 3759/5-1).

References

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Articles from Frontiers in Psychology are provided here courtesy of Frontiers Media SA

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The Impact of a Mnemonic Acronym on Learning and Performing a Procedural Task and Its Resilience Toward Interruptions

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The present study examines the potential impact of a mnemonic acronym on the learning, the execution, the resilience toward interruptions, and the mental representation of an eight-step procedural task with sequential constraints. 65 participants were required to learn a sequential task, including eight different steps which had to be carried out in a predefined sequence.

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Students had a great interest in dinosaurs and how they became extinct. Linked it to this learning outcome to teach students about asteroids

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I set a task for the class to create posters about a given planet to present to the class. These were the poster guidelines.
This links the key skill WWO

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To help student understanding of the big bang theory- students write down five points they learnt from this video to check student understanding

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The beginning of the universe, for beginners - Tom Whyntie

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Helps students learn all the planets

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Sparking student curiosity

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This is an example of a poster students made

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To explain the evidence for the big bang theory I compared it to a Usain Bolt race. All planets start at the same point. At the start, they are all moving at similar paces as they have lots of energy. Just like in a race with Usain Bolt some planets and celestial bodies move faster than others as they have more energy

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Comparing gravity on planets, students can then realise not all planets are the same. Can students point out any other differences other than gravity?

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Gravity Simulation Comparison On Different Planets - 3D Animation

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Series of questions that get harder depending on the colour. The harder the question the more points awarded. Students loved doing this in the classroom including my fifth-year class. The next time I have them I put it up at the start of class and see if people's scores have improved.

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Websites students used to research for their projects.

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Our solar system can be divided into three regions: the inner solar system, the outer solar system, and the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. The inner, rocky planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. These worlds also are known as terrestrial planets because they have solid surfaces. Mercury, Earth, a…

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Websites students used to research for their projects

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To kick off our post of planet facts, let's take a quick look at the order of the planets, starting from the closest and then moving out to the furthest.

We will delve into each planet individually later in the post.

First let's take a look at what a planet is exactly. Then the different types of planets followed by all the planets in order from the sun outward.

Planet Facts - What Is a Planet?

The answer to this question is a highly controversial one. This has not always been the case, though. In fact, before 1978 the definition of a "planet" was not really necessary. Until that time a planet simply meant a body in orbit around the Sun, that reflected sunlight, and was not a planetary moon, asteroid, or comet.

When Pluto's moon Charon was discovered in 1978, scientists were able to calculate Pluto's mass much more accurately than ever before. They soon realized that it was much smaller than they had previously believed.

At a tiny fraction of the mass of Mercury, Pluto was clearly a body much smaller than any other planet. This discovery led some to question whether Pluto was actually a planet or some other type of object.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, some objects similar in size to Pluto were discovered in the outer solar system. Because of that, scientists gave a more detailed definition of a planet.

Such definition was needed to separate those types of objects like Pluto into a distinct class. Otherwise, all of the newly found objects would have to be called planets as well.

In response to this uncertainty, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the official governing body for matters concerning naming astronomical objects, came to a definition of the term "planet." According to the IAU, a planet is a celestial body that meets the following criteria:

1. The object is in orbit around the Sun.

2. It has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape).

3. It has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit.

Planet vs Dwarf Planet

Planets are dwarf planets are two different classifications of astronomical bodies. With the word "dwarf" we are already given the idea that dwarf planets are smaller objects. The other difference lies in their orbits.

We used to have nine planets but Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in August 2006. It did not meet all the criteria because it has not "cleared the neighborhood" of its orbit over time. That means there are similar-sized objects as Pluto in its path around the Sun.

According to the IAU, a dwarf planet meets the following criteria:

1. It is in orbit around the Sun.

2. It has sufficient mass to assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape.

3. The object has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

4. It is not a satellite.

Together with Pluto in the dwarf planet category are Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. Ceres lies in the inner solar system in the asteroid belt. The other dwarf planets are located beyond the orbit of Neptune, in the Kuiper belt.

Types Of Planets

The planets fall into two categories based on their physical characteristics: the terrestrial planets and the gas giants.
Learn more " Learn more "
Planets In Order From The Sun

The order of planets from closest to farthest from the Sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. We could use mnemonics to easily remember the planets' order such as: "My very eager mother just served us nine pizzas." We can also make our own mnemonics and be creative about it.

The largest planet is Jupiter, followed by Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus, Mars and, the smallest planet, Mercury.

If you include dwarf planets as well, the planets in order become Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris being the furthest from the Sun.

To compare distances, instead of kilometers or miles, we also use astronomical units (AU). This is the distance from the Sun to Earth. One AU equals 149,600,000 km.

Now, let's take a look at the planets in order individually.

Mercury

Mercury has been known for a long time because it is visible to the naked eye. Galileo Galilei made the first telescopic observation of this small planet in the 17th century. It was named after the swift Roman god of commerce.

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. It lies at an average distance of about 58 million kilometers (36 million miles). In terms of the Earth-Sun distance, it is 0.4 AU.

Measuring around 4,880 km (3,032 mi) across, Mercury is the smallest of all the eight planets. It is 2.6x smaller than our planet and is just slightly bigger than the Earth's Moon.

Mercury Fast Facts

Since it is close to the Sun, the temperature on Mercury is extreme. At night, it can be as cold as -180°C (-290°F) but during the daytime, the temperature can soar up to 800°F (430°C). It does not have an atmosphere, but only a thin exosphere.

Mercury is tidally-locked to the Sun. It follows an egg-shaped orbit, the most eccentric of all planets. However, its axis has the least tilt. This small planet rotates slowly on its axis but orbits quickly around the Sun. A day there takes 59 days and a year is only 88 Earth days. It is in a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance. That means it makes three rotations for every two revolutions it completes around the Sun.

Mercury is a dense planet with a large metallic core. It has a lot of impact craters, some of them with distinct rays. It does not have any moons or rings.

Fun Facts About Mercury
read more about Mercury here...
Venus

Venus is only the second-closest planet to the Sun but it is the hottest. It has a very thick atmosphere which traps the heat from the Sun, thus causing its temperature to rise. It got its name from the Roman goddess of love and beauty, whose Greek counterpart is Aphrodite.

This planet lies around 108 million km (67 million mi) from the Sun. It is 12,104 km (7,521 mi) across, about the same size as Earth. Because of that, it is often called "Earth's twin." However, other than size, the two are very different. Venus is scorching hot, with temperatures around 475 °C (900 °F).

Venus is one of the brightest objects in our night sky, second only to the Moon. It has been a common sky fixture ever since antiquity, so one is credited with its discovery. With an apparent magnitude of -4.14, it is much brighter than the -1.46 magnitude Sirius. Because it is close to the Earth, Venus appears exceptionally bright to us. Even during the day, it is bright enough to be seen.

Venus Fast Facts

While Earth rotates in an anticlockwise direction, Venus spins backward. Because of that, the Sun rises in the west in Venus and sets in the east. Another thing that makes it different is that it spins on its axis at a very slow pace. It orbits the Sun in 225 Earth days but it takes 243 days for it to rotate on its axis. That means a day on Venus is 18 days longer than a year!

Venus is a volcanic planet with lots of craters on the surface. Its thick atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide and the yellow clouds are made up of sulfuric acid. Just like Mercury, it has no rings or moons.

Venus was first the first planet to be visited by a spacecraft through Mariner 2 in 1962. Many landers made their way to the planet's surface. However, they were short-lived because of the blazing heat.

Fun Facts About Venus
read more about Venus here...
Earth

The Earth is our home planet and the only one known where life exists. It has many names such as Gaia, Tellus, and even "the world." Whatever we call it, it sure is an interesting one.

The Earth is the largest terrestrial planet and the fifth-largest overall. It is the third planet from the Sun, with an average distance of 150 million km (93 million mi). This is just the perfect distance, not too close but also not too far from the Sun. It lies in the habitable zone, the area where the temperature is just enough to allow liquid water on its surface.

The Earth has four layers: the inner core, outer core, mantle, and crust. We live on the crust, the thinnest layer of the planet. The surface is 71% water and land only occupies only 29% of it.

Earth Fast Facts

Our atmosphere has the perfect ingredient for us to breathe. It is 78% nitrogen and 21 oxygen, and the remaining 1% is other gases. Aside from making life possible, this atmosphere also acts as a shield from incoming bodies such as meteoroids. These objects burn up once they enter our atmosphere, which results in meteor showers or "falling stars."

The Earth follows a slightly elliptical orbit around the Sun. This journey around the star takes 365.25 days. Additionally, it takes 24 hours to spin on its axis. The tilt of this rotational axis (23°) is the reason why we experience different seasons in a year. In comparison, Venus is only tilted by around 3° so it has a uniform season throughout. We have one Moon, which causes the tides in our oceans.

Fun Facts About Earth
read more about Earth here...
Mars

Mars is often dubbed the "Red Planet" because of the iron on its surface. It is the fourth planet from the Sun, located around 228 million km (142 million mi) away. This is a dry desert world that is also very cold.

Mars has been known by the ancients, looking like a reddish point in the night sky. With an apparent magnitude of around 1.50, we can readily spot it under a dark sky.

The red planet got its name from the Roman god of war whose Greek equivalent is Ares. It has two satellites-the most moons of any terrestrial planet. Phobos and Deimos have irregular shapes. They are named after the sons of Ares (Mars) in Greek mythology.

Mars Fast Facts

Mars is about 1.9 times smaller than Earth. Its diameter is around 6,805 km (4,228 mi). Though it is smaller, it shares some similarities with our planet. For one, a day there is roughly the same length as a day here on Earth. Martian days are called sols and one sol takes 24.6 Earth hours. Mars is tilted by 25° so it experiences different seasons as well.

Mars also has volcanoes, canyons, and similar surface structures. In fact, the Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in our solar system. Since Mars is farther from the Sun than us, it takes longer to complete one revolution. It orbits the Sun in 687 Earth days.

Mars has an atmosphere but it is very thin. Inhaling it would be toxic to us since it is largely composed of carbon dioxide, argon, and nitrogen. This thin atmosphere is also the reason for the planet's extreme temperature.

Fun Facts About Mars

Phobos is predicted to crash into Mars around 50 million years from now. The potato-shaped moon will shatter, which will likely create a ring around the planet.

As of 2021, three rovers are exploring its surface: Curiosity, Perseverance, and Zhurong. There are also eight orbiters studying it from above.

The sky on Mars looks reddish during the day and turns blue during sunsets. The total opposite of what our sky looks like here on Earth!

read more about Mars here...
Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest of all the solar system planets. It was named after the king of the gods in Roman mythology. With an apparent magnitude of about -2, it is easily visible to the naked eye. In fact, it is the third brightest object in our night sky.

Jupiter is roughly 142,984 km (88,846 mi) across. With that size, we can put 11 Earths side by side along its equator. It is also the most massive planet. If we combine all the seven other planets, Jupiter would still be twice as massive. A day on Jupiter is only 10 hours long-the shortest in the solar system. A year on this giant planet is much longer, taking about 12 Earth years.

Jupiter Fast Facts

This enormous planet is a gas giant made up of hydrogen and helium. It has extreme temperatures and pressures. The swirling bands and stripes that we often see on this planet are clouds of water and ammonia. Giant storms on Jupiter are common and they often last for a very long time. The famous Great Red Spot, for example, has raged for 300 years or more.

People have observed Jupiter for a long time. Astronomers became even more excited about it in 1610 when Galileo Galilei discovered its moons. It was the first time that satellites from another planet were discovered. The Galilean moons are Ganymede, Io, Europa, and Callisto. From then on, the number of Jovian moons has grown to 79. It has a ring system too!

Fun Facts About Jupiter

The Great Red Spot is a very large storm that could fit two to three Earths. It was first observed in 1665 by astronomer Giovanni Cassini. Though it might disappear in the next hundred years, a new one will likely replace it.

Auroras on Jupiter are the brightest in the solar system. They are much more intense than the light shows we have on Earth. Other than solar storms, auroras on Jupiter are also caused by its moon Io.

Since it has the same composition as the Sun, Jupiter is sometimes considered a failed star. It was not massive enough to fuse hydrogen and helium to produce energy. But if it were 75 times more massive, it would have become another star!

read more about Jupiter here...
Saturn

We know Saturn as the "ringed planet." It is the sixth planet from the Sun, located about 1.5 billion kilometers away. It was named after the Roman god of agriculture, whose Greek counterpart is Cronus.

Saturn is the second-largest planet, and like Jupiter, it is a gas giant with no solid surface. It measures roughly 120,536 km (74,897 mi) across, more than 9 times larger than Earth. The temperature on this planet is very cold. It also has extreme pressure and storms like those in Jupiter.

Saturn Fast Facts

A day on Saturn is only 10.7 hours long but a year there takes about 29 Earth years. Its fast rotation causes it to be oblate in shape. It is flat at the poles while its equator has an unmistakable bulge. Its low density also contributes to this.

The other outer planets also have rings but none as breathtaking as Saturn. This complex system, made up of ice and rock, has seven main rings. It extends more than 280,000 km (173, 983 mi) from the giant planet.

What makes Saturn more interesting is that it has the most moons in the solar system. The 82 known moons range in different sizes and compositions. Some of them have effects on the rings too. Life on this planet is impossible. However, some of its moons have the potential for life, especially the ocean worlds of Enceladus and Titan.

Fun Facts About Saturn
read more about Saturn here...
Uranus

Uranus is the second-farthest planet from the Sun. As the seventh planet, it lies roughly 2.9 billion km (1.7 mi) away from the star. It is famously known as the "sideways planet" because it is tilted on its axis by about 98°. As a result, it looks like it is rotating on its side!

The astronomer William Herschel discovered it in 1781 through a telescope. It had been observed many times before discovery but it was thought to be a star, just like Herschel initially did. It got its name from Greek mythology's primal god of the sky.

Uranus Fast Facts

Uranus is a big ball of gas just like Jupiter and Saturn. However, aside from hydrogen and helium, it largely contains water, ammonia, and methane. These materials are called "ices" so we call Uranus an "ice giant." It has 27 moons and a faint ring system.

Uranus has a diameter of about 51,118 km (31,763 km). At that size, we can fit four Earths along its equator. Also, it is the third-largest planet in the solar system. It is a cold world with temperatures around -195 °C (-320 °F). With its distance, sunlight travels nearly 3 hours to reach it.

A day on Uranus is shorter than a day here on Earth. A year there takes 84 years-even longer than a human lifetime. Aside from spinning on its side, Uranus rotates from east to west (retrograde) just like Venus. This tilt causes extreme seasons on this planet. The methane gas in its atmosphere gives Uranus its blue-green appearance.

Fun Facts About Uranus
read more about Uranus here...
Neptune

Neptune is the eighth planet and the farthest from the Sun. At 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles), it is 30 times as distant as the Earth is from the Sun. It was named after the god of the sea in Roman mythology.

The astronomer Urbain Le Verrier made mathematical predictions about Neptune's existence. Using his calculations, Johann Galle discovered the planet through a telescope in September 1846. Just days later, its largest moon, Triton, was also discovered. So far, 14 moons are known to orbit this planet. It also has a ring system.

Neptune Fast Facts

Distance: 4,501,000,000 km (2,796,791,736 mi)

Radius: 24,764 km (15,387 mi)

Temperature: -201 °C (-331 °F)

Day length: 16 Earth hours

Year length: 165 Earth years

Number of moons: 14

Neptune is about four times as large as Earth. It is an ice giant and is mostly composed of water, methane, and ammonia. Though it is a bit smaller than Uranus, it is much denser. At 1.638 g/cm3, it is the densest giant planet. It also has the strongest winds in the entire solar system.

Sunlight reaches Neptune's dark and cold world in four hours. Also, the light that our planet receives is nearly 1,000 times brighter than that on Neptune. A day there is only 16 hours long but a year takes 165 Earth years. It is in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Pluto. That means every time Neptune makes three orbits around the Sun, Pluto makes two. This relationship makes sure they never collide.

Scientists are still figuring out why Neptune has a darker blue color than Uranus. It was visited only once by a spacecraft. Voyager 2 made a flyby on this dark world in 1989.

Fun Facts About Neptune
read more about Neptune here...
Order Of The Planets In The Solar System: By the Numbers

Distance Of The Planets From The Sun:

For the distances between each of the planets, see our distances between planets calculator. You can also calculate your weight on other planets.

The Hypothetical Planet X

There have been several additional planets hypothesized throughout history. However, none of these planets has ever been found.

The most recent of these theorized planets was Planet X, also nicknamed Planet Nine. This is supposedly a giant planet with a very elongated orbit. And because of that, it takes thousands of years to orbit the Sun.

Scientists have not made any direct observation of Planet X. The existence of an undiscovered planet was just hypothesized to explain the unusual orbits of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). However, scientists are also open to other theories that may explain these strange orbits.

Common Questions

How many planets are in the Solar System?

According to the IAU's definition of planets, there are 8 known planets in the Solar System. These are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto is no longer considered a planet under the IAU definition.

Does Mars have oxygen?

Yes, but only a very small amount. While the Earth's atmosphere is 21% oxygen, it is only 0.13% on Mars. Carbon dioxide makes up 96% of the atmosphere on the red planet. With that said, we will need spacesuits on Mars because its air is toxic to us.

Can you walk on Saturn's rings?

Unfortunately, no. They look may look like solid structures but Saturn's rings are actually made up of millions of debris floating in space. Some of these materials are as small as dust while some are as large as houses. Saturn's gravity holds them together. But not only that, the planet has "shepherd moons" that keep these icy particles in place.

What body is most like Earth?

Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, is comparable to Earth. It has an atmosphere that protects it from radiation. This icy world possibly has a water ocean below the surface. It also has the elements needed for life. Though it is a unique world of its own, it is one of the most possible places for human colonization.

Why is Mars red?

Mars looks red because of iron on its surface. Its rocks and dust are rich in iron. Since they are just exposed in the open, the iron reacts with oxygen which results in a red rust color. These swirls of rusty dust are swept up by large storms into the atmosphere making its sky reddish. Read our post here if you want to learn more about why Mars is red.

Planet Facts - Sources:

https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/item/why-is-pluto-no-longer-a-planet/
https://sciencetrends.com/great-planets-order-size-distance-sun/#comments
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/681/solar-system-temperatures/

Planet Facts - Image Sources:

The eight planets: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Size_planets_comparison.jpg/1920px-Size_planets_comparison.jpg

Planet vs Dwarf Planet: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/images/videos/spaceshorts_dwarfplanet.jpg

Mercury: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Mercury.tif/lossy-page1-800px-Mercury.tif.jpg

Venus: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/in-depth/

Earth: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/The_Blue_Marble.jpg/800px-The_Blue_Marble.jpg

Mars: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/OSIRIS_Mars_true_color.jpg/800px-OSIRIS_Mars_true_color.jpg

Jupiter: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/PIA22946-Jupiter-RedSpot-JunoSpacecraft-20190212.jpg/800px-PIA22946-Jupiter-RedSpot-JunoSpacecraft-20190212.jpg

Saturn: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Saturn_from_Hubble.jpg/1024px-Saturn_from_Hubble.jpg

Uranus: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Uranus_-_January_11_1986_%2831459546672%29.jpg

Neptune: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/system/feature_items/images/82_carousel_neptune_1.jpg

Planet X: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/system/content_pages/main_images/383_planet_9_art_1_1400.jpg

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Planets In Order - Interesting Planet Facts about the Eight Planets

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Learn lots about the planets in order from the closest to the Sun, and many other planet facts in our dedicated guide.

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To add numeracy to my lessons I got students to calculate their weight on different planets. This allowed students to understand the difference between weight and mass and that different planets exert different gravities.

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To show how significant the discoveries Edwin Hubble made I gave students this fun fact:

The first calculator was made in 1886 and they only became common in the 1970s​

Edwin Hubble made all his scientific discoveries without the use of a  calculator!!

The Hubble law implies that the universe is expanding. This is one of the pieces of evidence to support the big bang theory

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I found students had great difficulty comprehending text and taking information they needed when observing them in other classes so i added comprehensions to my lesson.

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Gravity is what holds the planets in orbit around the sun and what keeps the moon in orbit around Earth. ​

The gravitational pull of the moon pulls the seas towards it, causing the ocean tides. Gravity creates stars and planets by pulling together the material from which they are made.

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This links to learning outcome: E&S 3: Students should be able to interpret data to compare the Earth with other planets and moons in the solar system, with respect to properties including mass, gravity, size, and composition.
Students had to use codapp to answer questions on the next tile (Interpreting data questions)

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To gauge student knowledge I gave a summative test at the end of the unit.

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Earth and the origin of the univ erse test 

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At the end of each lesson, I gave students a note of paper and they had to write two things they learnt and one thing they did not understand. This helped me in planning my lessons as I could easily go over content people may not have understood. I found it also gave a chance to shy students who would not normally speak out in class

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I used this website for ideas and if I was unsure of content.

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Hi all,
If using your mobile phones, I recommend you view this website through Google Chrome app and have Google drive and Youtube apps installed for a smoother viewing. R. Gallagher

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Gives students a visual idea of how small we really are!

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Universe Size Comparison | Cosmic Eye (Original HD)

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I used studyclix to make worksheets and find useful resources

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Twinkl was a huge help to me on placement and I got lots of worksheets and lesson ideas from here.

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Teaching Resources - Early Years, Primary, Junior Cycle, Parents

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Instant access to printable lesson plans, assessments, interactive activities, resource packs, PowerPoints, ebooks and teaching ideas in English and as Gaeilge.

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Useful website

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NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.