1 research outputs found
Toward more accurate measurement of the impact of online instructional design on students' ability to transfer physics problem-solving skills
In two earlier studies, we developed a new method to measure students'
ability to transfer physics problem solving skills to new contexts using a
sequence of online learning modules, and implemented two interventions in the
form of additional learning modules designed to improve transfer ability. The
current paper introduces a new data analysis scheme that could improve the
accuracy of the measurement by accounting for possible differences in students'
goal orientation and behavior, as well as revealing the possible mechanism by
which one of the two interventions improves transfer ability. Based on a two by
two framework of self-regulated learning, students with a performance-avoidance
oriented goal are more likely to guess on some of the assessment attempts in
order to save time, resulting in an underestimation of the student populations'
transfer ability. The current analysis shows that about half of the students
had frequent brief initial assessment attempts, and significantly lower correct
rates on certain modules, which we think is likely to have originated at least
in part from students adopting a performance-avoidance strategy. We then
divided the remaining population, for which we can be certain that few students
adopted a performance-avoidance strategy, based on whether they interacted with
one of the intervention modules designed to develop basic problem solving
skills, or passed that module on their first attempt without interacting with
the instructional material. By comparing to propensity score matched
populations from a previous semester, we found that the improvement in
subsequent transfer performance observed in a previous study mainly came from
the latter population, suggesting that the intervention served as an effective
reminder for students to activate existing skills, but fell short of developing
those skills among those who have yet to master it.Comment: Updated abstract, body, and captions after referee comment