Thesis (EdD)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2009. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Elisabeth Swanson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 263-272).

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This presentation is based on the refereed paper published in the ISKO 8 proceedings (see References for citation). It describes a study of the language used by undergraduate engineering students engaged in a civil engineering laboratory. Learnerâ s concepts and relationships in the area of soil consolidation were elicited in order to provide an understanding of the structural knowledge of novices and compare it with the knowledge structures of a human expert and a thesaurus tool. Concept maps and pathfinder networks were used to visualize and analyze the resultant knowledge structures of novice learners, expert, and tool. Results show that there is little similarity between the knowledge structures of the novice, the expert, and the tool. There is preliminary evidence that students with complex knowledge structures earn better grades thereby, encouraging collaborative research between instructional evaluation and knowledge organization in order to measure the educational impact of digital libraries (DL); for example, cause-effect relationships could be studied between the vocabularies used in browsing and other navigational systems in a DL and the educational outcomes achieved.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, May, 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

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This dissertation provides initial empirical evidence for Expectancy Value Theory for Help Sources and generates design recommendations for online courses based on the newfound understanding between theory and student behavior. My high-level research goals are pursued in the context of help seeking in the presence of reputation systems in MOOC discussion forums. Educational technology can be intentionally designed and introduced in such a way as to maintain the benefits of existing technology while reducing negative impact on learning-relevant behaviors. I do this through the lens of student expectancy and values for the help source, and costs of pursuing that help. Within this thesis I present three online survey experiments, one is intended to provide empirical evidence for the connection between Expectancy Value Theory for Help Sources and student help seeking outcomes. The remaining two survey experiments are designed to further investigate the results of a system for help exchange through the lens of Expectancy Value Theory for Help Sources. The first survey supports the existence of beliefs for help sources, although careful design of value manipulations is necessary to isolate value beliefs from expectancy beliefs for the help source. In a field experiment investigating the design of a help exchange system, I explore the connection between common reputation system features and Expectancy Value Theory for Help Sources. This provides support for the theory outside of a controlled laboratory setting. This Quick Helper MOOC Experiment and the supporting Quick Helper Theory Survey Experiment show that voting within a reputation system context decreases the number of peers invited to be helpers possibly through an increase in evaluation anxiety. Help giver badges ca reduce this evaluation anxiety and mitigate the negative impact of voting. I performed a final field experiment in a small private online course to examine these issues in a more naturalistic setting outside of the Quick Helper help exchange system. I explored learning expectancy-emphasizing email prompts and voting in the course discussion forum, and how these manipulations impacted larger, more nuanced dependent variables such as help seeking and learning. Results from this experiment are not as strong as the more tightly controlled survey experiments and Quick Helper MOOC field experiment, but we still see support in the general direction of our original hypotheses. From these experiments I generate a series of design recommendations for instructors of online courses implementing discussion forums: (1) reputation systems can have a positive effect on student engagement in discussion forums, but there may be a negative effect on help seeking and other vulnerable learning-relevant behaviors, (2) The negative impact of evaluation anxiety from voting can be mitigated through the use of either help giver badges or using only upvoting instead of up/downvoting which may reduce evaluation anxiety, and (4) Email prompts with dilute implementation have questionable impact on student contributions in discussion forums.

In STEM domains, robust learning includes not only fluency with procedures, but also recognition and application of the conceptual principles that underlie them. Grounded feedback is one instructional approach proposed to help students integrate conceptual knowledge into their learning of procedures. Grounded feedback functions primarily by having students take an action in the target domain (often symbolic) and receiving feedback in a representation that is easier to reason with. This thesis defines grounded feedback and evaluates its effectiveness. I define grounded feedback with four characteristics: (1) The feedback reflects students’ inputs according to rules that are inherent to the topic of study. For example, an inputted equation with two variables may be shown as a graph. (2) The feedback facilitates selfevaluation - by examining the feedback, students can evaluate for themselves if their answers are correct or not. (3) Students do not directly manipulate the feedback representation. Instead, the inputs are in a format that matches the domain learning goals. (4) The feedback conveys information about the nature of errors, not just that a particular action was incorrect. For example, the feedback may indicate the direction or magnitude of the error. Some prior experiments on systems with the four characteristics of grounded feedback found greater learning of target procedures (Nathan 1998) and greater transfer (Mathan & Koedinger 20015), relative to robust controls. Over four studies with 4th and 5th graders, this thesis explores three tutor designs for fraction addition that incorporate visualizations of magnitude, including grounded feedback. Two studies of grounded feedback show effects of robust learning relative to correctness feedback, including greater future learning (in study 2) and transfer (in study 3). Another study found little difference between grounded feedback with and without correctness. In the last study, relative to correctness feedback, two implementations of dynamically linked concrete representations (variations on grounded feedback) showed greater robust learning (pre-test to delayed test). The correctness feedback tutor, used in three of these studies, is a high-bar control, including immediate step-level correctness feedback and adaptive on-demand hints. Indications of more robust learning with the grounded feedback tutor are promising, though not conclusive. Grounded feedback is intended to leverage concrete representations to elicit students’ prior knowledge of relevant concepts. Over two Difficulty Factor Assessments, 5th graders demonstrated difficulty incorporating magnitude information when evaluating fraction addition equations. In particular, students could generally evaluate an equation correctly when it was represented with fraction bars. However, including symbols with the bars interfered with students’ evaluations by triggering incorrect transfer from whole-number addition. Students also did not fully grasp that when two positive fractions are added, the resulting sum is bigger than each addend alone. These findings may help explain why the benefits of grounded feedback are not as strong as proponents of concrete representations might hope. Namely, the target population may not be able to take full advantage of the magnitude visualization because they lack pre-requisite knowledge of how fraction addition involves magnitude.

This study was designed to identify students’ perceptions of learning activities, assessment formats, and content on their understanding of the nature of science (NOS) by comparing and examining constructs created by Canadian and Korean students. Participants were 217 Canadian and 319 Korean Grade 8 students that filled out questionnaires; additionally, 9 students volunteered for semi-structured interviews. Descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis of variance and partial least squares were used to examine the quantitative data. A conceptually clustered matrix was used for the qualitative analyses. Results indicated that students from both countries perceived 1) their learning activities were teacher-directed, 2) class presentations and discussions occurred least frequently, 3) paper-and-pencil tests determined science scores, 4) science tests relied heavily on knowledge of science while knowledge about science was least likely to be assessed, and 5) generally students held relativistic views on science. The effect for country on NOS concepts was statistically significant across all of their perceptions except for the concepts of culturally embedded science and the perceptions of short-answer test formats. Specifically, Canadian students perceived that they had relatively more student-directed activities while Korean students perceived that they had more teacher-directed science lab activities. Further, Canadian students were inclined to hold more relativistic views across the NOS concepts. It was also noted that Korean students provided more political examples while Canadian students provided stem cell research or environmental issues. An examination of associations revealed that students’ learning activities, assessment formats, and content are good predictors of NOS understanding since these constructs explain variances from 19.7% for Empirical NOS to 63% for Scientific Methods. Results from students’ open-ended responses to the NOS concepts and the semi-structured interviews were consistent with the quantitative analyses. Most interviewees agreed that what, and how, they learned science-- and how their learning was assessed--affected their views of science since school science education was the important factor in developing their scientific knowledge. These results imply that diverse learning activities and assessments could prove to be a better approach to enhancing students’ understanding of NOS than teacher-directed learning activities and test formats requiring a single correct answer.

Science communication, as a multidisciplinary field, serves to transfer scientific information to individuals to promote interest and awareness in science. This process resembles science education. Rooted in science education and science communication studies, this study examines the 4th and 5th grade students` usage of prominent science information sources (SIS), the features of these sources, and their effective and ineffective uses and processes in communicating science to students. Guided by situated learning and uses and gratifications (U&amp / G) theories, this study is a phenomenological qualitative inquiry. Data were gathered through approximately 64 hours of classroom observations / focus group and individual interviews from four elementary schools (two public, two private schools) in Ankara, T&uuml / rkiye. Focus group interviews were conducted with 47 students, and individual interviews were carried out with 17 teachers and 10 parents. The data were analyzed manually and MAXQDA software respectively. The results revealed that students used various SIS in school-based and beyond contexts to satisfy their cognitive, affective, personal, and social integrative needs. They used SIS for (a) science courses, (b) homework/project assignments, (c) exam/test preparations, and (d) individual science related research. Moreover, the results indicated that comprehensible, enjoyable, entertaining, interesting, credible, brief, updated, and visual aspects of content and content presentation of SIS were among the key drivers affecting students` use of SIS. The results revealed that accessibility of SIS was an important variable in students` use of these sources. Results further shed light on the connection between science education and science communication in terms of promoting science learning.