An experiment... for SCIENCE!

For years, I've been making interactives to explain science.  Today, I launched an interactive to do science!

Specifically, I want to know if interactives actually are better than static content at helping people learn.  Question: does being asked to guess/predict an answer, before being shown the answer, help you retain information better?  Hypothesis: yes, but let's test that.  So on my web page, it randomly assigns you to a static version (control) or interactive version (experiment), then gives you a memory recall test.

The link below is directly to the experimental condition, and the survey at the end will not be analyzed.  As much as I'd love to have you as part of this experiment, I've already shown you too much info + a GIF.  Still, here's the link:

🔬 the experimental condition! (7 min play)

However, you can still help!  If you'd like to help me get a larger sample size, here's a tweet you can retweet:

🐦 for your retweeting pleasure

And finally, for more background on this experiment + intellectual transparency, here's a blog post "pre-registering" my hypotheses:

📊 my experiment "pre-registration" (5 min read)

This is just a small experiment to answer a small question, but it's a big step for me in two ways:  1) It'll be nice to finally prove (...or disprove...) the value of "explorables", for my sake & other educators'.  2) This is my first real science experiment, and I'm excited to learn about statistics & apply it to a real problem!  (and in the future, I can further consolidate what I've learnt by making an explorable explanation on statistics)

Either way, I'm excited to see what comes out of this!  I'll analyze & post the results – as an interactive paper – by the end of the month.  See you then!

<3,
~ Nicky

P.S: if you picked the $10/mo+ "badly-drawn peep" reward, I just sent out an email asking for reference photos! please let me know if you didn't get the email, thx