Question queue
Batch everything the human wants from the AI into numbered blue questions.
Variants
- default
Data fields
The fields a spec's page can set for this component (see switchback show question-queue --json):
questions
Grounding
Helps: when a question can wait until the page has been worked: trying an answer yourself before being told improves later understanding on average, though deferring an AI's answer has not itself been tested
Backfires: when the parked question blocks the work on the page, or when the material is new and complex enough that working without guidance costs more than it teaches, as it did for young learners and for domain-general skills
- BAttempting an answer yourself before being given one improves later understanding and retention, compared with receiving the answer first.Sinha & Kapur (2021), Slamecka & Graf (1978), Kapur (2008), Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006)
- BKeeping task-relevant information in a stable, visible external store, rather than in working memory, improves performance on the concurrent task, at the cost of weaker memory for the offloaded content.Gilbert (2015), Storm & Stone (2015), Sparrow, Liu & Wegner (2011), Risko & Gilbert (2016), Meyerhoff, Grinschgl, Papenmeier & Gilbert (2021), Hesselmann (2020)