Learning history by practicing abduction: Does doing offline practice first help with online practice?

To understand the effect of abduction practice, this study involved students in creating their own abductive items, which the teachers implemented in an application named Abduction-Genius for all other students to play. To understand the learning effect of abduction, this study explored the correlates between field-independent cognitive style (FI-CS), external cognitive load (ECL), the achievement of offline posing of abduction items (hereafter, posing achievement), attitude to-wards engaging in abduction (hereafter, attitude) and game performance of playing the abduction game (hereafter, game performance). The results revealed: participants' FI-CS was negatively related to their ECL but positively related to their posing achievement; their posing achievement was negatively related to their ECL; their ECL was not significantly related to attitude, but their posing achievement was positively related to attitude; and attitude was positively related to game performance.