What is Implicit Instruction

There has been a clear lack of rigorous empirical evidence on the effectiveness of learning objects (LOs) in education. This chapter reports the results of four experimental studies that investigated the effectiveness of drill-and-practice and simulation-type LOs in comparison to more traditional teaching methods. Results suggest that a simulation LO that works as a tool to support students’ exploration process can be especially helpful to students’ inquiry learning, but drill-and-practice LOs are less effective than traditional teaching methods in procedural learning. Findings also strongly suggest that we should not see LOs and traditional methods as rivals but as being complementary to one another. The authors hope that the results can inform teachers, instructional designers, and content producers as to what aspects they should consider when designing and implementing LOs in different educational contexts.