Let's Set Up Some Subgoals: Understanding Human-Pedagogical Agent Collaborations and Their Implications for Learning and Prompt and Feedback Compliance

International audienceResearch on collaborative learning between humans and virtual pedagogical agents represents a necessary extension to recent research on the conceptual, theoretical, methodological, analytical, and educational issues behind co-and socially-shared regulated learning between humans. This study presents a novel coding framework that was developed and used to describe collaborations between learners and a pedagogical agent (PA) during a subgoal setting activity with MetaTutor, an intelligent tutoring system. Learner-PA interactions were examined across two scaffolding conditions: prompt and feedback (PF), and control. Learners' compliance to follow the PA's prompts and feedback in the PF condition were also examined. Results demonstrated that learners followed the PA's prompts and feedback to help them set more appropriate subgoals for their learning session the majority of the time. Descriptive statistics revealed that when subgoals were set collaboratively between learners and the PA, they generally lead to higher proportional learning gains when compared to less collaboratively set goals. Taken together, the results provide preliminary evidence that learners are both willing to engage in and benefit from collaborative interactions with PAs when immediate, directional feedback and the opportunity to try again are provided. Implications and future directions for extending co-and socially-shared regulated learning theories to include learner-PA interactions are proposed

Facilitating argumentative knowledge construction with computer-supported collaboration scripts

Online discussions provide opportunities for learners to engage in argumentative debate, but learners rarely formulate well-grounded arguments or benefit individually from participating in online discussions. Learners often do not explicitly warrant their arguments and fail to construct counterarguments (incomplete formal argumentation structure), which is hypothesized to impede individual knowledge acquisition. Computer-supported scripts have been found to support learners during online discussions. Such scripts can support specific discourse activities, such as the construction of single arguments, by supporting learners in explicitly warranting their claims or in constructing specific argumentation sequences, e.g., argument–counterargument sequences, during online discussions. Participation in argumentative discourse is seen to promote both knowledge on argumentation and domain-specific knowledge. However, there have been few empirical investigations regarding the extent to which computer-supported collaboration scripts can foster the formal quality of argumentation and thereby facilitate the individual acquisition of knowledge. One hundred and twenty (120) students of Educational Science participated in the study with a 2×2-factorial design (with vs. without script for the construction of single arguments and with vs. without script for the construction of argumentation sequences) and were randomly divided into groups of three. Results indicated that the collaboration scripts could improve the formal quality of single arguments and the formal quality of argumentation sequences in online discussions. Scripts also facilitated the acquisition of knowledge on argumentation, without affecting the acquisition of domainspecific knowledge

Increasing Undergraduate Student Engagement in Academics: An Ecological Momentary Intervention

As students enter the university environment, they are presented with various commitments that may or may not impede academic performance. With the issues of student attrition and retention, there is a need to provide further tools for students to use to monitor their performance. As students’ progress to higher level coursework, expectations and time commitments increase, and self-regulation of learning becomes even more important. Researchers may be able to deliver information to help students with self-regulation of learning by leveraging new affordances in technology in students’ daily lives. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the feasibility and associated findings of an ecological momentary intervention surrounding self-regulation, motivation and study strategy utilization. This quasi-experimental study had 49 participants. The overarching project for this dissertation was a two-week intensive longitudinal design with a baseline appointment. For the in the moment assessment via a smartphone application, there were two conditions: an intervention and an assessment-only group. This dissertation includes two manuscripts. The first manuscript examines methodological issues related to the feasibility of using multiple types of prompting (user-initiated and researcher-generated) when utilizing in the moment data collection in an educational context, specifically factors that may influence participants’ response rates and compliance to the researcher protocol. The second manuscript examines motivational and emotional differences of the same participants within a self-regulation intervention delivered in the moment via ecological momentary intervention. Specifically, I investigated motivational and emotional factors related to student behavior (as measured by reports of studying) during the monitoring time period. In the feasibility paper, I found overall that participants responded to approximately two prompts a day and that baseline factors such as lower self-control were associated with greater missing data. I also found discrepancies between responses to in-the-same-moment study related questions (i.e., participants saying they had not studied while also reporting a subsequent amount of time spent studying), which informed which outcomes to use in the content-based manuscript. In the content manuscript, I found no condition differences between the intervention and assessment-only groups in regard to the number of user-initiated study sessions, indicating a lack of compliance to the intervention protocol. I found that academic motivation and anxiety over time were associated with the probability of reporting studying. Finally, I found moderate relationships for end of day reports of study times with the in the moment reports, suggesting a potential rounding bias. Based upon the results, it appears there were issues with fidelity of implementation within the protocol. This could be due to the burden placed upon participants for in the moment data collection, or additional circumstances not measured within the study. In regard to lower response rates, participant compensation could have played a role due to the data collection burden. With the majority of data collection taking place during the latter part of the semester, the time of the study may have contributed to lower instances of studying as participants for various reasons (e.g., fewer assessments, already established study practices).There needs to be further refinement to the intervention protocol to be able to measure studying in the moment including direct reminders to participants about their study behaviors and ways to further develop the training protocol for initiating prompts. Additionally, waves of data collection across the course of the semester will be explored in future work

Pedagogy beyond compliance: teachers providing opportunities for students to self-regulate their learning in the primary-secondary transition years of schooling

This study explored how teachers provided opportunities for young adolescent students to be empowered as learners. Despite the crucial role that self-regulated learning plays in enhancing students’ achievement at school and beyond, few studies have created a practice-based pedagogy aimed at enabling students to rationalise their goals, to accept responsibility for their learning and to develop their capabilities as resourceful learners in social learning environments. The research was conducted as dual case studies within a primary school and a secondary school as transitionally connected settings in Queensland, Australia. The middle years of schooling, Years 5 to 9, have been identified as being a critical stage of development in young adolescents’ lives for effective lifelong learning. How schools and teachers can contribute to fostering these learning qualities was highlighted as a topic relevant to current Australian and international educational policy and debate. Rich qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations from eight teacher participants in the middle years of schooling. Thematic analysis methods were used in inductive intra-case and cross-case processes of generating codes, categories and themes. The findings were reported as interpretations that were intertwined with snapshots of data that represented the voices of the teacher participants. The data foregrounded teachers’ practices to identify that in striving to foster students’ effective learning they implemented pedagogical approaches aimed beyond the management of students’ behaviour for compliance and they sought to empower students as resourceful learners. As an original contribution to knowledge, the findings were synthesised to construct a practice-based pedagogical model for self-regulated learning. The study found that the teachers endeavoured to provide opportunities for the students to regulate their own learning through pedagogical approaches that connect the learning, facilitate the learning, diversify the learning, socialise the learning and reflect on teaching. Extending this model, the transition pedagogy framework for self-regulated learning presents key elements that attend to the distinctive needs of young adolescent students in the primary–secondary transition years of schooling. This study’s findings offer a proactive pedagogical approach to behaviour management within classroom environments that focuses on potentiating students’ self-regulation of their learning

Effects of Metacognitive Monitoring on Academic Achievement in an Ill-Structured Problem-Solving Environment

Higher education courses are increasingly moving online while educational approaches are concurrently shifting their focus toward student-centered approaches to learning. These approaches promote critical thinking by asking students to solve a range of ill-structured problems that exist in the real world. Researchers have found that student-centered online learning environments require students to have self-regulated learning skills, including metacognitive skills to regulate their own learning processes. Much of the research suggests that externally supporting students while they are learning online, either directly or indirectly, helps them to succeed academically. However, few empirical studies have investigated what levels of support are most effective for promoting students\u27 self-regulated learning behaviors. Additionally, these studies reported conflicting results – some found maximum support to be most effective while others found no significant difference. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of different levels of support for self-regulated learning during a complex learning activity to solve an ill-structured problem-solving situation in an online learning environment. In addition, the role of students\u27 self-efficacy on their academic achievement was examined. A total of 101 undergraduate students from three international studies courses offered at a large urban Southeastern public university in the United States participated in the study. The students were randomly assigned to treatment (minimum support, maximum support) and control groups. Students\u27 academic achievement scores were measured using a conceptual knowledge test created by the professor teaching the courses. O\u27Neil\u27s (1997) Trait Self-Regulation Questionnaire measured students\u27 self-efficacy. Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) was conducted to analyze the data. The ANCOVA results indicated significant improvement of the academic achievement of the minimum support group versus both the maximum support and control groups. Additionally, self-efficacy as a co-variable did not significantly impact students\u27 achievement scores in any of the groups. The overall results indicated that it is important to consider the level of self-regulated learning support when designing online learning environments promoting students\u27 critical thinking skills. Promoting students\u27 self-regulated learning skills is vital when designing online higher education courses

An investigation into the effects of reciprocal teaching intervention as a means of developing the at-risk primary student's reading comprehension and metacognitive skills, mediated by motivational variables

Relatório de estágio do mestrado em Gestão, apresentado à Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra, sob a orientação de Filipe Coelho e Nádia Reis.Na atualidade, e com a modernização empresarial, existe um aumento significativo das exigências éticas, ambientais, legais e comerciais. A Responsabilidade Social torna-se assim importante para que haja uma incorporação de boas práticas nas organizações o que cria oportunidades e previne riscos, tendo um impacto positivo na sociedade e na reputação na marca da empresa. A realização deste relatório permitiu-me constatar que a atividade socialmente responsável é uma das grandes preocupações da Sonae, pois tem em conta os impactos socioeconómicos presentes nas suas ações e projetos. Fazendo parte da Direção de Marketing, mais precisamente da equipa de Responsabilidade Social e Relações Públicas do Continente, foi possível estar dentro do grande projeto solidário que é a Missão Sorriso como também todos os seus projetos subjacentes, assegurando que todas as suas ações devidamente planeadas estivessem a ser bem executadas, tendo em atenção a todos os pormenores em que estão envolvidas. Ao efetuar o meu estágio na Sonae MC, tive a oportunidade de desenvolver e melhorar certas competências, visto que se trata de uma experiência realmente favorável como primeiro contacto com um mundo do trabalho. Assim, foi possível desenvolver a minha capacidade de comunicação e argumentação, criar ligações com clientes e fornecedores, responder ao trabalho sobre pressão, etc. Foram propostas algumas medidas de melhoria da minha parte, no que diz respeito à facilidade de processos internos para que estes sejam de mais fácil resolução e execução

Voices of High School Seniors: Perceptions of National Honor Society Students Regarding Their Cognitive Engagement in High School

The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to examine cognitive engagement in high school classrooms from the perspectives of twelve high school seniors who were members of the National Honor Society. No empirical studies have been conducted to explore how students perceive cognitive engagement before and after receiving training in gauging system-wide levels of student engagement, based on the Instructional Practices Inventory (IPI). These seniors participated in two focus groups and individual interviews, utilizing a semi-structured, open-ended interview protocol to elicit responses to questions in order to discover meaning, themes, and patterns in the perceptions of these high school seniors regarding their own and other students\u27 levels of engagement in high school. Participants were also trained with the IPI training protocol to become IPI data collectors to assess levels of student engagement within high school classrooms, utilizing the IPI, in a rural Iowa, mid-size school system. Analysis for this research was completed using the constant comparative model which is a method for analyzing data in order to generate a theory formed from the data and based on inductive reasoning. Findings indicated a general understanding among high school seniors as to how they are and are not cognitively engaged in high school classrooms based on the following six categories: compliance, feedback and encouragement, enjoyment and interest, challenge and rigor, relationships and expectations, and control and choice. Understanding how cognitive engagement is conceptualized and experienced by high school seniors may lead to enhanced learning conditions for them. This research has implications for utilizing student voices, via high school seniors, for articulating a consistent perspective on perceived levels of cognitive engagement in high school classrooms. These findings also have the potential to inform teacher pedagogical practices, as well as increase understanding of the importance of listening to the student voice. Further studies were recommended to determine if similar results would occur when students from different social, economic, geographic, and ethnic areas are included

Transformative Experiential Impacts on Students: An Intervention

Students’ successes in first-year writing courses at the university level are critical to academic success and degree completion. Fostering students\u27 engagement in first-year writing courses has proved challenging for institutions of higher education (IHE). Utility value interventions (UV) employing social psychological intervention (SPI) methods have been implemented successfully to aid students in understanding the value of course content and improve achievement. Utility value is the perceived usefulness of a task or content. Similarly, transformative experience (TE) interventions have been implemented with success. Transformative experience is a learning outcome achieved when students re-conceptualize their out-of-school experiences as a result of their experiences in school. However, these interventions have not been implemented in the domain of writing, including in the context of first-year writing courses. Using a quasi-experimental field-based intervention, this study tested the effectiveness of four interventions: utility value (UV) only, teaching for transformative experience (TTE) only, UV + TTE, and control condition. The conditions were created by varying writing and discussion-based prompts. In the context of first-year writing courses at a four-year university, I examined how these interventions work and for whom they are most effective using measures of utility value for writing, transformative experience with writing, and performance on a writing task. Measures of expectation for success, initial interest, and prior academic performance were used as controls when comparing conditions. Controlling for initial utility value and expectations for success, I did not find significant main effects of the interventions on the measure of utility value given at the end of the semester. However, I found that the combined condition interacted with the measure of initial utility value suggesting that the effectiveness of this intervention was dependent on students’ prior utility value. Controlling for initial interest and expectations for success, I did not find significant main effects of the interventions on the transformative experience measures given at the end of the semester. However, I found that the combined condition interacted with the prior interest measure suggesting that the effectiveness of this intervention was dependent on students’ prior interest. In addition, controlling for initial expectations for success and prior achievement, I found mixed evidence that performance on the writing task was significantly lower for students in the combined (UV+TE) condition compared to students in the UV only condition. These results suggest that, although UV and TE interventions have been effective in other domains, the effectiveness of these intervention may not transfer easily to the domain of writing. Further research is needed to understand why transfer to the domain of writing is difficult and what modifications are needed to foster effectively UV and TE within the domain of writing