This study examined the comparative effectiveness of learning of cognitive skills when instruction is presented through computer-based instruction using student-to-computer ratios of one-to-one and two-to-one. Effectiveness was gauged through scores on posttests administered subsequent to completion of each of nine computer-based lessons and on a single composite test score.

Thesis (M.A (Psychology))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2016 / Undergraduate students’ require a certain degree of digital literacy in order to make use of the internet as a resource and educational tool. This report argues that two critical aspects of digital search literacy are the student’s ability to effectively execute and monitor the search strategies used to navigate the ever-increasing number of webpages; and the critical thinking skills required to evaluate those documents in an academic context. Therefore, digital literacy requires effective self-directed learning (SDL) skills and appropriate epistemic cognition (EC). The present research used a sequential explanatory design, which comprised of two phases: Stage 1, N = 119 and Stage 2, N=17. The sample for both phases of the project was drawn from students enrolled for first-year level psychology courses at the University of the Witwatersrand. The sample for Stage 2 was drawn from students who had already completed Stage 1, which required the completion an online questionnaire. During the second phase, students were tasked with conducting a web-based search on an essay topic relating to the discipline of psychology. Several research objectives were examined; general self-reported epistemic cognition and readiness for self-directed learning levels of a sample of undergraduate South African university students; self-reported self-directed learning behaviours, epistemic cognition and digital search literacy issues; the impact of search strategies on the type and quality of information sources located; and the psychology-specific epistemic beliefs involved in the evaluation of source features of web based documents. Findings showed that students did indeed engage specific self-directed learning and epistemic cognition behaviours while searching for resources online. The key components of digital search literacy included, self-directed learning (monitoring and strategy use) and epistemic cognition (source evaluation). In terms of rating the sources, personal justification and justification by authority were the most predominant when students rated the most credible sources; while relevance to task, personal justification and format/style were applied more often when rating the least credible web documents. In conclusion, future research on digital literacy should include the relative contribution of SDL and EC components as important mechanisms for online search strategies and critical source evaluation. Keywords: self-directed learning, epistemic cognition and beliefs, source evaluation, web search, navigation behaviour, strategies / GR2017

Many adults who have dual language experience describe themselves as "passive bilinguals," able to understand two languages, but speak only one. The aim of this study was to examine the relation between language production and comprehension in bilingual children in order to determine whether bilingual comprehension is more readily achieved than production. ... Productive and receptive skills in both languages were assessed using standardized tests. Children's relative amount of exposure to each language, as well as their language choice during production was measured via interview with the primary caregiver.... Language exposure as measured via dominance in one language over another appears to affect productive language differently than receptive language, further evidencing that language exposure is a significant predictor of acquisition that predicts production and comprehension differently. Additionally, when input is held constant, child language choice is uniquely related to productive and receptive language skill. The results of this study not only describe patterns of productive and receptive language skills and their correlates in young bilinguals, but they also address competing theories regarding the roles of input and output in the development of language comprehension and production. / by Krystal M. Ribot. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-04-23T12:32:51Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Elaine Cristina Vieira Cobos.pdf: 2882107 bytes, checksum: e74e2ef2f441467949d732935fa41e59 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-23T12:32:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Elaine Cristina Vieira Cobos.pdf: 2882107 bytes, checksum: e74e2ef2f441467949d732935fa41e59 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The objective of this research was to verify if the learning and the use of metacognitive strategies have a positive impact on writing, making use for that of the gender reviews. The theoretical framework adopted was that of Cognitive Psychology, guided mainly by the ideas of Flavell (1976); to whom metacognition is regarded as cognitive monitoring of the process of reasoning and/or solving problems. The method was qualitative, involving two undergraduate students of a private school of education, located in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The procedures consisted of seven meetings, which the purposes were: (a) to provide an explanation about how to write a ‘review’ and how to employ metacognitive strategies in order to do that; (b) to write three reviews (the last of which was about a book already read and previously reviewed); (c) to collect two written self-assessments of the participants about their respective writing productions; and (d) to interview each student, in order to gather their reflection about the process of writing, when it is articulated to the use of metacognitive strategies. Following Flavell's suggestion (1976), three categories of analysis were created (knowledge of the person; knowledge of the task; and knowledge of the metacognitive strategies), as well as criteria to identify the subjects’ level of domain regarding the use of metacognition. The results indicated that there was an evolution in the writing of reviews, with participants moving from level 1, at the beginning of the work, to level 3, at the end of it. These results suggest that metacognitive strategies must be intentionally taught during formal education, an outcome that emphasizes their importance in promoting the ability of writing. But school can only do this throughout a solid teacher education, something that the country has not yet to offer / O objetivo deste estudo foi verifica se a aprendizagem e o uso de estratégias metacognitivas têm impacto positivo na escrita, fazendo uso, para tanto, do gênero resenha. O referencial teórico adotado foi o da Psicologia Cognitiva, guiado pelas ideias de Flavell (1976), para quem a metacognição é entendida como o monitoramento cognitivo do pensamento durante a solução de problemas. O método adotado foi de natureza qualitativa, envolvendo duas estudantes de Pedagogia, de uma universidade localizada no interior do estado de São Paulo, Brasil. Os procedimentos consistiram em sete encontros, cujos propósitos eram: (a) oferecer uma exposição acerca de como escrever uma resenha e como empregar estratégias cognitivas para fazer isso; (b) promover a escrita de três resenhas (a última delas sendo a de livro já resenhado anteriormente); (c) coletar junto às participantes duas autoavaliações quanto as suas produções escritas; e (d) entrevistar cada estudante, para conhecer como pensavam o processo de escrever, quando articulado ao uso de estratégias metacognitivas. Seguindo a sugestão de Flavell (1976), três categorias de análise foram criadas (conhecimento da Pessoa, da Tarefa e das Estratégias Metacognitivas). Os resultados alcançados indicam que houve evolução na escrita de resenhas, com as participantes saindo do nível 1, no início do trabalho, para obter o nível 3, ao seu final. Esse achado sugere que estratégias metacognitivas devem ser intencionalmente ensinadas durante a educação obrigatória, uma recomendação que salienta a importância de se promover melhor a competência escrita. Mas a escola só poderá fazer isso quando puder oferecer aos futuros professores uma sólida formação inicial, algo que ainda não se encontra disponível no país

Social interactions, decision-making, perceptions, and learning are all influenced by affect. Frustration, anxiety, and fear in particular can draw cognitive resources away from successful task completion, causing the learner to focus on the source of the emotion instead. Serious games offer an ideal environment to investigate how feedback influences student affect and learning outcomes, particularly when feedback is delivered via computer system detection. This dissertation discusses the results of an experiment run in September 2015 to investigate which motivational feedback condition yields the most significant correlation to positive learning gains when a computer system intelligently generates and delivers feedback based on the detection of frustration while participants played the serious video game, vMedic, a combat casualty care simulation which includes triage tasks. Of the three motivational feedback conditions examined (self-efficacy, social-identity, and control-value), the self-efficacy motivational feedback interventions yielded positive, statistically significant learning gains when compared to the social identity and control-value feedback conditions, as well as the non-motivational feedback control condition, and the no feedback control condition.

Society has consistently sought means of improving extant effective tools and designing new effective tools for educational purposes. With the consistent progression of technology, mathematical games—especially mathematical educational video games—stand out as potentially powerful mediums for helping new mathematics learners make sense of formal mathematical ideas. The aim of this study was to understand the effects that the introduction and use of a specific mathematical video game had for the cognitive, affective, and content-retentive learning outcomes of eighth graders studying elementary algebra for the first time. The three research questions guiding the study were the following: 1) How does integrating mathematical game play into a traditional eighth grade algebra curriculum impact students' cognitive learning outcomes in elementary algebra?; 2) How does integrating mathematical game play into a traditional eighth grade algebra curriculum impact students' affective outcomes about both mathematics in general and algebra specifically?; 3) How does integrating mathematical game play into a traditional eighth grade algebra curriculum impact students' content retention in elementary algebra? In order to realistically implement mathematical educational games in typical mathematics classrooms, a holistic understanding of such games’ effects must be understood through research addressing several aspects of students’ learning experiences. This study utilized a mixed methodology, drawing both quantitative and qualitative data from instruments administered to a class of eighth graders split into control and treatment groups. Quantitative data primarily entailed a series of three short examinations that tested students on their algebraic equation-solving content knowledge. Some additional metrics from game play data were recorded and discussed as quantitative data by the principal researcher. Qualitative data primarily entailed two series of interviews—one in two parts and one in three parts—and one questionnaire. Some additional observations of student interactions were also recorded and discussed as qualitative data by the principal researcher. Data on student cognition and student affect were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of the treatment. Data on student content retention were collected following a one-month recess after the treatment. This research suggests nine attributes that typified the mathematical game play experience found in this study: three attributes regarded student cognition, four attributes regarded student affect, and two attributes regarded student content retention. Additionally, the principal researcher designed and discussed a framework for assessing the cognitive mappings formed by student game players between content featured in mathematical game play and content of formal mathematical ideas. In analyzing these mappings, the principal researcher highlighted types of interspatial cognitive connections that proved to be either fruitless or, in fact, detrimental to student game players, damaging proper development and/or understanding of formal mathematical ideas. The study’s results have implications for informing future considerations of educational game design and the practical implementation of educational games as pedagogical tools within classrooms.

In this research we have experimented on three classes of EFL college students, each trained on one of the three cognitive linguistic constructs just mentioned. After the respective training, each class was required to write a posttest essay applying the knowledge they had just learned. Chapter 6 we have analyzed the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. Though from the statistical results, some of the classes have not improved their mean scores significantly, our more dependable qualitative composition analyses using cognitive-functional-linguistic tools, did reveal that in general the students can understand the trained CL constructs and are able to apply the knowledge to their essays, which has caused the improvements of many of the posttests in terms of richness and depth of ideas, of textual organization, and of syntactic choices. / Studies of ESL/EFL writing still lack a comprehensive theory that can accommodate all the major approaches to ESL/EFL writing, such as the process, the product, and the genre ones. None of these can claim to be able to solve all the problems independently in real ESL/EFL classrooms. / The cognitive-functional-linguistic analytical tools introduced in Chapter 5 and applied mainly in Chapter 6 serve to strengthen the product concerns of our cognitive-functional-linguistic process writing framework. We want to claim that this research framework has not only integrated various writing approaches, but also the potential to accommodate other potential approaches, such as those with literary and stylistic concerns. / The present approach takes combining all these paradigms in an organic way as a starting point and seeks a theoretical framework for it from the neighboring discipline, linguistics, especially cognitive linguistics (CL) and systemic functional grammar (SFG). The writing model that has been set up in Chapter 4 of this research has provided us with a detailed description of the writing processes. With this model we can address very specific writing issues, including those relevant to our experiment, such as how and where ideas and language related to conceptual metaphor (CM), image schemas (IS) and cognition-based grammar (CG) come into the writing processes, and how prewriting activities can provide help for the writers. / Yuan, Ye. / "August 2007." / Adviser: Peter Crisp. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0596. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 240-252). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

The research was conducted in Sydney and Hong Kong using students, from grades 5 to 9, whose first language or teaching medium was English, learning to read Chinese as second language. According to cognitive load theory, the processing of single Chinese characters accompanied by pictures should impose extraneous cognitive load and thus hinders learning. In Experiments 1a and 1b, simple Chinese characters appeared to be processed likes pictures. Reading Chinese characters without pictures produced significantly better learning outcomes than reading them with pictures, suggesting that subjects processed Chinese characters and their English translations according to the Dual Coding model. In Experiment 2, grade 6 students learned to read two-character compound words in word-and-word and picture-and-word conditions. As expected, phonetic compounds were learned more effectively when presented along with the same word written in English than when accompanied by a picture of the object represented. In Experiment 3, grade 6 students were used in an investigation of the differential learning effects of two-character-compound and two-single-characters formats. The two-single-characters format, being of low element interactivity, resulted in better learning outcomes than the compound format, in which the two components were necessarily of higher element interactivity. In Experiment 4, six concrete sentences and six abstract sentences were used to investigate the learning strategies used by grade 9 students in processing second-language Chinese sentences. In a &quotno-picture &quot condition, a Chinese sentence was printed on each learning card underneath the English translation; and in a &quotwith-picture &quot condition, a picture was positioned above the condition pair of sentences. As expected, the mean learning outcomes were greater for the no-picture s than for the with-picture conditions, and the difference between the no-picture and with-picture means was greater for concrete sentences than for abstract sentences. A logographic visual processing strategy was probably employed in reading concrete sentences but an analytic strategy used in reading abstract sentences. A new dual-coding model, based on the bilingual dual coding theory for different patterns in reading Chinese as a second language at various structural levels of processing was proposed.

The overarching goal of this dissertation was to evaluate the contextual components of instructional strategies for the acquisition of complex programming concepts. A meta-knowledge processing model is proposed, on the basis of the research findings, thereby facilitating the selection of media treatment for electronic courseware. When implemented, this model extends the work of Smith (1998), as a front-end methodology, for his glass-box interpreter called Bradman, for teaching novice programmers. Technology now provides the means to produce individualized instructional packages with relative ease. Multimedia and Web courseware development accentuate a highly graphical (or visual) approach to instructional formats. Typically, little consideration is given to the effectiveness of screen-based visual stimuli, and curiously, students are expected to be visually literate, despite the complexity of human-computer interaction. Visual literacy is much harder for some people to acquire than for others! (see Chapter Four: Conditions-of-the-Learner) An innovative research programme was devised to investigate the interactive effect of instructional strategies, enhanced with text-plus-textual metaphors or text-plus-graphical metaphors, and cognitive style, on the acquisition of a special category of abstract (process) programming concept. This type of concept was chosen to focus on the role of analogic knowledge involved in computer programming. The results are discussed within the context of the internal/external exchange process, drawing on Ritchey's (1980) concepts of within-item and between-item encoding elaborations. The methodology developed for the doctoral project integrates earlier research knowledge in a novel, interdisciplinary, conceptual framework, including: from instructional science in the USA, for the concept learning models; British cognitive psychology and human memory research, for defining the cognitive style construct; and Australian educational research, to provide the measurement tools for instructional outcomes. The experimental design consisted of a screening test to determine cognitive style, a pretest to determine prior domain knowledge in abstract programming knowledge elements, the instruction period, and a post-test to measure improved performance. This research design provides a three-level discovery process to articulate: 1) the fusion of strategic knowledge required by the novice learner for dealing with contexts within instructional strategies 2) acquisition of knowledge using measurable instructional outcome and learner characteristics 3) knowledge of the innate environmental factors which influence the instructional outcomes This research has successfully identified the interactive effect of instructional strategy, within an individual's cognitive style construct, in their acquisition of complex programming concepts. However, the significance of the three-level discovery process lies in the scope of the methodology to inform the design of a meta-knowledge processing model for instructional science. Firstly, the British cognitive style testing procedure, is a low cost, user friendly, computer application that effectively measures an individual's position on the two cognitive style continua (Riding & Cheema,1991). Secondly, the QUEST Interactive Test Analysis System (Izard,1995), allows for a probabilistic determination of an individual's knowledge level, relative to other participants, and relative to test-item difficulties. Test-items can be related to skill levels, and consequently, can be used by instructional scientists to measure knowledge acquisition. Finally, an Effect Size Analysis (Cohen,1977) allows for a direct comparison between treatment groups, giving a statistical measurement of how large an effect the independent variables have on the dependent outcomes. Combined with QUEST's hierarchical positioning of participants, this tool can assist in identifying preferred learning conditions for the evaluation of treatment groups. By combining these three assessment analysis tools into instructional research, a computerized learning shell, customised for individuals' cognitive constructs can be created (McKay & Garner,1999). While this approach has widespread application, individual researchers/trainers would nonetheless, need to validate with an extensive pilot study programme (McKay,1999a; McKay,1999b), the interactive effects within their specific learning domain. Furthermore, the instructional material does not need to be limited to a textual/graphical comparison, but could be applied to any two or more instructional treatments of any kind. For instance: a structured versus exploratory strategy. The possibilities and combinations are believed to be endless, provided the focus is maintained on linking of the front-end identification of cognitive style with an improved performance outcome. My in-depth analysis provides a better understanding of the interactive effects of the cognitive style construct and instructional format on the acquisition of abstract concepts, involving spatial relations and logical reasoning. In providing the basis for a meta-knowledge processing model, this research is expected to be of interest to educators, cognitive psychologists, communications engineers and computer scientists specialising in computer-human interactions.

This study examined a web-based undergraduate course structured around social learning theories through the lens of social construction as a theoretical framework and a case study research method. The purpose of the study was to investigate students' learning experiences from a cognitively guided research framework. Instructional strategies practiced in the course, instructional design developed, and demonstrated students' learning outcomes were examined to help characterize students' learning experiences. The study proceeded from a social constructivist framework, employing a qualitative case study approach. Data collected to support the description of students' learning experiences included early course survey, in-depth interviews, course documents, students' artifacts, online class interactions, email correspondences among participants, and the researcher's journals based on online observations. The results of the study reveal that students' learning experiences and learning outcomes were greatly affected by the instructor's belief about teaching a distance course. Her belief that students should be fully responsible for their own learning in the web-based course resulted in minimal facilitation of the class in all aspects, including moderating students' online discussions, fostering learning communities within the class, and providing elaborate, critical feedback to elicit students' cognitive processes. As a result, the engaged cognitive processes and knowledge domains students demonstrated over the term were not significantly improved. Furthermore, the course goal of establishing a collaborative, interactive, and social learning environment for distance students was not met. The results of this study contribute to the picture of the facilitation skills and moderating practices that support more fully the goal of the development of a cognitively rich learning community. / Graduation date: 2006