The more, the better? Learning with feedback and instruction

Strategy instruction and formative feedback are powerful instructional strategies to support learning. However, combining them may not necessarily be effective. Previous research on the combination of strategy instruction and feedback produced both additive and reducing effects on learning. It is an open question whether and under which conditions combining strategy instruction and feedback enhances students’ learning. We investigated potential synergy and interaction effects of combining strategy instruction and feedback on learning in physics, the underlying mechanisms, and their generalizability (elaboration level of feedback, instructional sequence). We conducted three online experiments (N1 = 437, N2 = 310, N3 = 166) with university students. In Experiment 1 and 2, in the learning phase, participants read a strategy instruction or no instruction. In a subsequent practice phase, they solved troubleshooting tasks on electric circuits and received either feedback or no feedback. In Experiment 3, students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (no intervention, learning phase first, practice phase first). We used the same material for all experiments. In Experiment 1, we found no additive combination effects of strategy instruction and corrective feedback. Surprisingly, for far transfer, corrective feedback reduced the effect of prior instruction. Contrarily, in Experiment 2, we obtained additive effects by combining strategy instruction with elaborated feedback. Experiment 3 showed that these additive findings were irrespective of the instruction-feedback-sequence. Our findings indicate that the elaboration level of feedback determines whether combining instruction and feedback produces additive or reducing effects. •Combining strategy instruction and feedback is not necessarily effective.•Providing lower-order (corrective) feedback led to no additive combination effects.•Arousal explained reducing effect on far transfer as a result of negative feedback.•Elaborated feedback could counteract reducing effects and lead to additive effects.•The sequence of strategy instruction and feedback did not matter.