As part of the series "Psychologisches Forschungskolloquium" Christina Wekerle, M.A. and Prof. Dr. Ingo Kollar discuss whether constructive learning activities and worked examples are helpful.

To exploit the potentials of digital technologies on students’ knowledge construction processes (see Sung, Yang, & Lee, 2017), teachers require technology-related teaching skills (TRTS; Koehler & Mishra, 2009). Part of TRTS is the ability to reason effectively about the potentials of digital technology to support students’ knowledge acquisition in a given classroom situation. Optimally, teachers acquire such skills during university-based teacher education, particularly since studies show that pre-service teachers lack the relevant skills (cf. Bergner, 2018; Hammerness, Darling-Hammond & Shulman, 2002; Seidel & Prenzel, 2007). In this talk, we focus on the effects of different configurations of a case-based online learning environment to foster pre-service teachers’ TRTS. More specifically, using a 2x2-factorial between-subjects design, we look at whether adding two kinds of scaffolds improve the effects of CBR on pre-service teachers’ TRTS: (a) prompts that engage them in constructive vs. passive learning activities (Chi & Wylie, 2014) as well as worked examples vs. problem-solving (Renkl & Atkinson, 2002). Participants were N = 252 pre-service teachers. First results will be presented and possible consequences discussed.