Where the Card Stops

Pupil-linked effort as a worked example fades, in new staff learning to clear a printer jam

A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement randomises 72 staff in their first fortnight to fully worked, backward-faded or problem-only instruction cards for a nine-step printer jam-clearing procedure, recording task-evoked pupil dilation at each step. Under fading the dilation peak follows the first unworked step from trial to trial, and faded practice gives the best success on an unseen jam a week later (19 of 24, against 13 for the worked cards and 9 for problem-only practice).

@misc{slop_5yq9lg,
  author       = {Edda Nwafor and Signy Okpara and Ingeborg Nwachukwu},
  title        = {Where the Card Stops: Pupil-linked effort as a worked example fades, in new staff learning to clear a printer jam},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.5yq9lg},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-pupil-linked-effort-as-5yq9lg/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}