Improved metacognitive thinking can impact student’s success. A novel homework method called Solved Problem Analysis (SPA) was developed with the intent to foster metacognitive thinking. It was hypothesized that supporting metacognition would lead to increased performance on in-class exams and the ACS final exam. Results showed SPA was effective at increasing performance on both. In order to more directly measure student’s metacognitive thinking, a knowledge survey was implemented to measure the difference between student’s perceived understanding of the material and their actual performance. These knowledge surveys showed students were able to predict how much of the material they understood. Monitoring one’s thinking is an important part of metacognition. This cognitive monitoring can be mimicked in study group interactions. The effect of self-assembled study groups on student exam performance was also examined, where it was found that self-assembled study groups did not effectively increase exam performance.

Mathematics remains a subject many students fail to become competent in by the time they graduate from high school. Most students often require one on one, individualized tutoring to help them reach competence. That remains a challenge since most classrooms are understaffed and underfunded, frequently having only one teacher in a overpopulated classroom. One strategy that has been used to alleviate some of this over reliance on the teacher has been faded worked examples, or fading. Fading is the successive removal of the last steps in a series of problems until the student is solving problems completely on their own. The current study aimed to determine whether fading improves learning, and for whom. The goal was to compare fading with business as usual (control), worked examples with self-explanations, and fading with self-explanations. Specifically, I was interested in the following research questions: (1) Do the three experimental conditions differ in promoting posttest scores on surface area and volume? (2) Do the three experimental conditions differ in promoting conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge of surface area and volume at posttest? and (3) When interaction terms are created between student profiles and conditions within regression analyses, which profiles explain significant variance in posttest scores? Repeated measures analysis of variance, principle axis factor analysis, and simple linear regressions were used to examine the differences between conditions at posttest, to create propensity scores, and to determine whether there were any interactions between propensity scores and conditions. Results indicated a significant effect of fading on posttest scores. A regression with propensity factors indicated that the fading conditions appeared to benefit low propensity students moreso than high propensity students. Findings are discussed in terms of educational implications and future research that can complement these findings to contribute to future research. / Educational Psychology

Den tekniska utvecklingen har varit storskalig i världen och människors vardagsliv har ändrats mycket det senaste seklet. I kontrast till detta har den svenska skolan inte sett samma hastiga tekniska utveckling. Samtidigt visar resultat från PISA att elevers resultat i matematik sjunker. Här identifieras två problem som måste lösas. Därför syftade denna undersökning till att underlätta elevers matematikstudier genom att skapa en ny digital lärmiljö. Lärmiljön kom att kombinera matematiska lösningsförslag med nätcoaching. Det gjordes med hjälp av det digitala läromedlet Mathleaks och lärplattformen TalkMath. Därefter analysera hur entill-en nätcoaching fungerade i denna nya lärmiljö. Undersökningen syftade även ta reda på hur elever uppfattar lärmiljön och om den kan vara ett komplement till lösningsförslag. Lärmiljön skapades med grund i pedagogiska teorier såsom Vygotskijs sociokulturella perspektiv, teorier om coaching, synkron kommunikation samt teorier om en-till-en nätcoaching. Två metoder användes för att samla denna data. För det första sparades alla konversationer automatiskt i en databas. För det andra så användes en enkät för att samla elevernas uppfattning av lärmiljön. Ramverket Undersökande relation användes för att analysera alla konversationerna mellan elev och coach. Studenterna valdes ut från en svensk gymnasieskola där en av författarna jobbar, eleverna var i åldrarna 15-18 år. Resultaten indikerade att denna nya lärmiljö var ett bra komplement till lösningsförslag. Det drogs även slutsatsen att lärmiljön hjälpte elevers kognitiva progression. Undersökningen visar att en digital lärmiljö kan vara ett bra komplement för elever som studerar matematik med lösningsförslag. / The digital and technical development of the world have been large-scale and people’s day-today life has changed immensely the last century. In contrast, the Swedish school system has not been seeing the same rapid technical development. As students’ results in mathematics are declining an approach to battle this trend can be to apply this technological development on students’ studies in mathematics. Therefore, this thesis sought to ease students’ mathematics studies by creating a digital learning environment. By combining workedexamples with online coaching the environment was created through the platforms Mathleaks and TalkMath. Then examine how online one-to-one coaching works in this environment. It also sought to analyse how students perceive this teaching environment and if it can be used as a complement to worked-examples. The environment was created based on pedagogical theories such as Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective, coach theories, synchronous communication as well as theory around one-to-one online coaching. Two methods were used to gather data. First, the conversations were automatically stored in a database. Secondly, a survey was used to gather the students’ opinion of the teaching environment. The framework Relationship of Inquiry was used to analyse all conversations between students and coaches. Students were chosen from an upper secondary school in the ages of 15-18 where one of the authors worked. Results indicated that the teaching environment that was created was a good complement to worked-examples. The environment was shown to help student’s knowledge progression. This shows that digital teaching environments can be a valuable addition for students when studying mathematics.

The current study assessed an error reflection intervention on Algebra I students’ conceptual and procedural knowledge and sense of belonging to mathematics. Also of interest was whether perceptions of the functionality of errors mediated the effect of condition on learning and sense of belonging to mathematics. Middle school students (N = 207) were randomly assigned within classroom to one of four conditions: 1) a Problem-Solving Control group, 2) a Correct Examples Control group, 3) a Correct Examples Error Reflection condition that promoted reflection on hypothetical errors through self-explanation prompts, or 4) an Incorrect Examples Error Reflection condition that promoted reflection on displayed errors within the example through self-explanation prompts. Conceptual and procedural knowledge, sense of belonging to mathematics and perceived functionality of errors were measured pre- and post-intervention. After controlling for unanticipated clustering effects, results suggest that reflecting on and explaining errors within a worked examples intervention is just as effective at promoting learning as traditional problem solving alone or working with traditional correct worked examples and written self-explanation prompts. Students’ sense of belonging to mathematics or perceived functionality of errors for learning were high at the start of the study and remained so throughout the intervention. Perceptions of the functionality of errors were unrelated to learning and sense of belonging to mathematics. The limited size of the minority population in the sample did not allow for exploration of differential effects of condition for underrepresented minority (URM) students. However, these students reported lower feelings of belonging to mathematics than non-URM students. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. / Educational Psychology

Content analyses of research in the literature of gifted education (Coleman, 2006; Rogers, 1999, 2006) has shown a consistent absence of research investigating methodology for instructing gifted students and for the development of expertise using new technologies. In this study, utilising electronic instructional delivery, an investigation was undertaken of the differential effects and appropriateness of matching the prior knowledge of the learner to the instructional method. Underpinned with a theoretical understanding of gifted education and cognitive load theory, a series of three experiments was designed and implemented to determine whether gifted students learn more effectively under guided discovery design than with example based instruction, while not identified as gifted ability students perform significantly better under direct example based instruction than with guided discovery. Data were collected and analysed in three stages. Experiment 1 was conducted in the novel domain of Boolean switching equations. Experiments 2 and 3 used identical test instruments with novel tasks in the semi-familiar domain of geometry. A total of 155 Years 7, 8 and 9 students at three metropolitan secondary schools participated. The study explored whether the presence of schemas, that facilitated greater problem-solving ability in gifted students, would generate clear evidence of instructional efficiency and preference for either mode of instruction. As students advanced from novice state to expert in particular domains of learning, it was anticipated that gifted students would progress from benefiting from worked example instruction to more efficient learning in guided discovery mode. This hypothesis was rejected as the results from each of the experiments did not confirm the hypothesised outcomes. There was no manifested expertise-reversal effect. The absence of any clear delineation of enhanced learning proficiency mode of instruction for gifted students does, however, contribute to the advancement and understanding of cognitive load theory and the complexity of learning strategies necessary for gifted learners.

Prompting students to self-explain during problem solving has proven to be an effective instructional strategy across many domains. However, despite being called “domain general”, very little work has been done in areas outside of math and science. In this dissertation, I investigate whether the self-explanation effect holds when applied in an inherently different type of domain, second language grammar learning. Through a series of in vivo experiments, I tested the effects of using prompted self-explanation to help adult English language learners acquire the English article system (e.g., teaching students the difference between “I saw a dog” versus “I was the dog”). In the pilot study, I explored different modalities of self-explanation (free-form versus menu-based), and in Study 1, I looked at transfer effects between practice and self-explanation. In the studies that followed, I added an additional deep processing manipulation (Study 2: analogical comparisons) and a strategy designed to increase the rate of practice and information processing (Study 3: worked example study). Finally, in Study 4, I built and evaluated an adaptive self-explanation tutor that prompted students to self-explain only when estimates of prior knowledge were low. Across all studies, results show that self-explanation is an effective instructional strategy in that it leads to significant pre- to post-test learning gains, but it is inefficient compared to tutored practice. In addition to learning gains, I compared learning process data and found that both self-explanation and practice lead to similar patterns of learning and there was no evidence in support of individual differences. This work makes contributions to learning sciences, second language acquisition (SLA), and tutoring system communities. It contributes to learning sciences by demonstrating boundary conditions of the self-explanation effect and cautioning against broad generalizations for instructional strategies, suggesting instead that strategies should be aligned to target knowledge. This work contributes to second language acquisition theory by demonstrating the effectiveness of computer-based tutoring systems for second language grammar learning and providing data that supports the benefits of explicit instruction. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the relative effectiveness of a broad spectrum of explicit learning conditions. Finally, this work makes contributions to tutoring systems research by demonstrating a process for data-driven and experiment-driven tutor design that has lead to significant learning gains and consistent adoption in real classrooms.

Content analyses of research in the literature of gifted education (Coleman, 2006; Rogers, 1999, 2006) has shown a consistent absence of research investigating methodology for instructing gifted students and for the development of expertise using new technologies. In this study, utilising electronic instructional delivery, an investigation was undertaken of the differential effects and appropriateness of matching the prior knowledge of the learner to the instructional method. Underpinned with a theoretical understanding of gifted education and cognitive load theory, a series of three experiments was designed and implemented to determine whether gifted students learn more effectively under guided discovery design than with example based instruction, while not identified as gifted ability students perform significantly better under direct example based instruction than with guided discovery. Data were collected and analysed in three stages. Experiment 1 was conducted in the novel domain of Boolean switching equations. Experiments 2 and 3 used identical test instruments with novel tasks in the semi-familiar domain of geometry. A total of 155 Years 7, 8 and 9 students at three metropolitan secondary schools participated. The study explored whether the presence of schemas, that facilitated greater problem-solving ability in gifted students, would generate clear evidence of instructional efficiency and preference for either mode of instruction. As students advanced from novice state to expert in particular domains of learning, it was anticipated that gifted students would progress from benefiting from worked example instruction to more efficient learning in guided discovery mode. This hypothesis was rejected as the results from each of the experiments did not confirm the hypothesised outcomes. There was no manifested expertise-reversal effect. The absence of any clear delineation of enhanced learning proficiency mode of instruction for gifted students does, however, contribute to the advancement and understanding of cognitive load theory and the complexity of learning strategies necessary for gifted learners.

Den tekniska utvecklingen har varit storskalig i världen och människors vardagsliv harändrats mycket det senaste seklet. I kontrast till detta har den svenska skolan inte sett sammahastiga tekniska utveckling. Samtidigt visar resultat från PISA att elevers resultat i matematiksjunker. Här identifieras två problem som måste lösas. Därför syftade denna undersökningtill att underlätta elevers matematikstudier genom att skapa en ny digital lärmiljö. Lärmiljönkom att kombinera matematiska lösningsförslag med nätcoaching. Det gjordes med hjälp avdet digitala läromedlet Mathleaks och lärplattformen TalkMath. Därefter analysera hur entill-en nätcoaching fungerade i denna nya lärmiljö. Undersökningen syftade även ta reda påhur elever uppfattar lärmiljön och om den kan vara ett komplement till lösningsförslag.Lärmiljön skapades med grund i pedagogiska teorier såsom Vygotskijs sociokulturellaperspektiv, teorier om coaching, synkron kommunikation samt teorier om en-till-ennätcoaching. Två metoder användes för att samla denna data. För det första sparades allakonversationer automatiskt i en databas. För det andra så användes en enkät för att samlaelevernas uppfattning av lärmiljön. Ramverket Undersökande relation användes för attanalysera alla konversationerna mellan elev och coach. Studenterna valdes ut från en svenskgymnasieskola där en av författarna jobbar, eleverna var i åldrarna 15-18 år. Resultatenindikerade att denna nya lärmiljö var ett bra komplement till lösningsförslag. Det drogs ävenslutsatsen att lärmiljön hjälpte elevers kognitiva progression. Undersökningen visar att endigital lärmiljö kan vara ett bra komplement för elever som studerar matematik medlösningsförslag. / The digital and technical development of the world have been large-scale and people’s day-to day life has changed immensely the last century. In contrast, the Swedish school system has not been seeing the same rapid technical development. As students’ results in mathematic sare declining an approach to battle this trend can be to apply this technological development on students’ studies in mathematics. Therefore, this thesis sought to ease students’ mathematics studies by creating a digital learning environment. By combining worked examples with online coaching the environment was created through the platforms Mathleaks and TalkMath. Then examine how online one-to-one coaching works in this environment. It also sought to analyse how students perceive this teaching environment and if it can be usedas a complement to worked-examples. The environment was created based on pedagogical theories such as Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective, coach theories, synchronous communication as well as theory around one-to-one online coaching. Two methods were used to gather data. First, the conversations were automatically stored in a database. Secondly, a survey was used to gather the students’ opinion of the teaching environment. The framework Relationship of Inquiry was used to analyse all conversations between students and coaches. Students were chosen from an upper secondary school in the ages of 15-18 where one of the authors worked. Results indicated that the teaching environment that was created was a good complement to worked-examples. The environment was shown to help student’s knowledge progression. This shows that digital teaching environments can be a valuable addition for students when studying mathematics.

A key challenge of the learning sciences is moving research results into practice. Educators on the front lines perceive little value in the outputs of education research and demand more “usable knowledge”. This work explores the potential instead of usable artifacts to translate knowledge into practice, adding scientists as stakeholders in an interaction design process. The contributions are two effective systems, the scientific and contextual principles in their design, and a research model for scientific research through interaction design. College student study practices are the domain chosen for the development of these methods. Iterative ethnographic fieldwork identified two systems that would be likely to advance both learning in practice and knowledge for applying the employed theories in general. Nudge was designed to improve students’ study time management by regularly emailing students with explicit recommended study activities. It reconceptualizes the syllabus into an interactive guide that fits into modern students' attention streams. Examplify was designed to improve how students learn from worked example problems by modularizing them into steps and scaffolding their metacognitive behaviors though problem-solving and self-explanation prompts. It combines these techniques in a way that is exceedingly easy to author, using existing answer keys and students' self-evaluations. Nudge and Examplify were evaluated experimentally over a full semester of a lecture-based introductory chemistry course. Nudge messages increased students’ sense of achievement and interacted with students’ existing time management skills to improve exam grades for poorer students. Among students who could choose whether to receive them, 80% did. Students with access to Examplify had higher exam scores (d=0.26), especially on delayed measures of learning (d=0.40). A key design decision in Examplify was not clearly resolvable by existing theory and so was tested experimentally by comparing two variants, one without prompts to solve the steps. The variant without problem solving was less effective (d=0.77) and less used, while usage rates of the variant with problem solving increased over time. These results support the use of the design methods employed and provide specific empirical recommendations for future designs of these and similar systems for implementing theory in practice.

För att lyckas lösa problem och använda kunskap behöver en person först ha lärt sig grundläggande kunskap om problemområdet. Sådant lärande kräver att den lärandes arbetsminne inte överbelastas med oändamålsenlig information. Studien undersöker effekten av lärandetekniken worked examples, som visats vara effektiv för att inte överbelasta arbetsminnet inom ämnen som fysik och matematik. Worked examples kommer från cognitive load theory och här undersöks teknikens effekt inom biologiundervisning, med fokus på ämnesområdet ekologi. Högstadieelevers kunskap inom ekologi mättes, varpå de inom undervisning antingen arbetade med worked examples eller instuderingsfrågor. Därefter mättes deras kunskapsnivå återigen, för att på så vis jämföra metodernas effekt på deltagarnas lärande. Elever som lärts med worked examples visade på en större kunskapsutveckling gällande snarlika uppgifter som de övat på, medan kunskapsutveckling för frågor med andra lösningsmetoder gav tvetydigt resultat. Tekniken worked examples har härmed visats sig vara en användbar teknik inom ämnesområdet ekologi inom biologiundervisningen. Den kan med fördel användas under initial-inlärningsfas inom biologiämnet för att hjälpa elever förvärva kunskap.