Aktuelle Anstellung

Promotionsstudentin  an der Freien Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft und Psychologie, Arbeitsbereich Lernen und Lehren mit Digitalen Medien 

Promotionsstipendiatin der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes 

Berufserfahrungen

Wissenschaftliche Qualifikationen

Promotionsthema

A critical goal in education is to promote lasting learning that equips students with knowledge that is applicable in the long term. Journal writing, a widely recognized generative learning activity, has been shown to significantly improve learners’ comprehension by supporting the construction of coherent mental representations. However, generative learning activities often fail to promote long-term retention. In my dissertation project, I aim to complement and enhance journal writing by incorporating desirable difficulties—specifically, retrieval practice and spacing—that are known to improve long-term retention by consolidating mental representations in memory. To advance our theoretical understanding of and explore the practical implications for lasting learning, I will conduct three successive experimental studies examining the benefits of these learning activities in this under-explored research area. In Study I, I will investigate the effects of combining journal writing with the desirable difficulty of retrieval practice. Specifically, I will examine whether the book format (i.e., open-book vs. closed-book) of the learning task effectively influences learning outcomes after 1 week. In Study II, I will explore the benefits of spacing (i.e., distributed practice over time) in journal writing, and whether these benefits depend on learners’ requirement to retrieve the learned content (i.e., open- vs. closed-book format). Finally, in Study III, I will examine the long-term effects (i.e., over 8 weeks) of the most effective combination of journal writing, including automatic feedback provided by artificial intelligence, based on the findings of Studies I and II. Overall, with this doctoral thesis, I aim to provide valuable insights into how to effectively design and implement journal writing activities, resulting in evidence-based recommendations for educational settings.