This trip reporting and GPS-based prompted-recall travel survey was undertaken to provide a better understanding of (a) demographic and behavioural differences between students with a home telephone land line and students without one (b) effects of carrying a GPS device on trip reporting (c) differences in trips reported and confirmed through a prompted-recall survey, and (d) performance of the TRIPS platform. The survey was designed and conducted at the University of Toronto between November 2008 and April 2009. It targeted mostly university students and returned 90 valid interviews. Participants were required to carry a GPS device with them for the two days surveyed. They were then asked to report their trips first, and then to confirm their recorded trips through the web-based prompted-recall tool, TRIPS. Preliminary analysis was conducted based on the reported data, and improvements to the TRIPS platform have been suggested.

This trip reporting and GPS-based prompted-recall travel survey was undertaken to provide a better understanding of (a) demographic and behavioural differences between students with a home telephone land line and students without one (b) effects of carrying a GPS device on trip reporting (c) differences in trips reported and confirmed through a prompted-recall survey, and (d) performance of the TRIPS platform. The survey was designed and conducted at the University of Toronto between November 2008 and April 2009. It targeted mostly university students and returned 90 valid interviews. Participants were required to carry a GPS device with them for the two days surveyed. They were then asked to report their trips first, and then to confirm their recorded trips through the web-based prompted-recall tool, TRIPS. Preliminary analysis was conducted based on the reported data, and improvements to the TRIPS platform have been suggested.

The purpose of this study was to explore imitation in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) by (a) examining the ability of children with ASD to engage in deferred imitation, as compared to typically developing (TD) children; (b) determining the impact of differing time delays on the ability of children with ASD and TD children to imitate simple actions on objects; and (c) examining the role of a verbal prompt on the ability of children with ASD to engage in deferred imitation, as compared to TD controls. Additionally, the role of language in deferred imitation was explored. Participants included 15 children with ASD and 15 TD children. Participants observed object oriented actions and were given the opportunity to imitate spontaneously. Those participants who did not imitate spontaneously were given a verbal prompt and a further opportunity to imitate. Participants with ASD demonstrated fewer spontaneous and total (i.e. spontaneous and prompted) imitations and took more time to do so at a short and a longer time delay, as compared to TD participants. Participants with ASD were given more verbal prompts than TD participants at a short and a longer time delay. Language was related to deferred imitation at a short time delay for participants with ASD but not for TD participants and language was not related to deferred imitation at a longer time delay for either group. / Graduate / 0525 / 0529

Introduction : La rétroaction sur la performance des personnes étudiantes infirmières lors de l’utilisation de simulateur de patients sur ordinateur contribuerait à l’apprentissage et au développement du raisonnement clinique en supportant la métacognition (Zary et al., 2006). Or à notre connaissance, la forme et le contenu de ce type de rétroaction demeure peu discuté dans les écrits scientifiques. Objectif : Ce projet de recherche comportait trois objectifs. Le premier était de contribuer au développement d’une fonctionnalité de rétroaction dans un simulateur sur écran, le second visait à documenter la perception de son utilité à la suite d’une expérimentation guidée en laboratoire auprès de personnes étudiantes infirmières et, enfin, le troisième objectif visait à décrire l’appréciation générale du simulateur par les personnes participantes. Méthodes : Un devis de recherche descriptif avec méthodes mixtes auprès d’un échantillon de convenance constitué d’étudiantes et étudiants en sciences infirmières d’une université québécoise a été retenu pour cette étude. Le modèle de rétroaction PROMPTED (Rudland et al., 2013) a été retenu pour orienter la conception de la rétroaction dans le simulateur sur écran. L’accès au simulateur s’est fait par un lien web et, par la suite, les personnes participantes devaient compléter un questionnaire web autoadministré pour documenter leur appréciation de la rétroaction fournie pendant la simulation et du simulateur sur écran en soi. De plus, des entrevues ont été réalisées pour enrichir la description de l’utilité perçue de la rétroaction offerte dans le simulateur sur écran. Résultats : La rétroaction intégrée dans le simulateur sur écran selon les principes du modèle PROMPTED a permis de guider et de bien renseigner les étudiantes au cours de l’activité. Les données recueillies suggèrent l’appréciation de l’utilisation de la rétroaction en cours d’activité plutôt que d’avoir seulement un solutionnaire à la fin de l’exercice. Conclusion : En plus d’apporter une plus-value au simulateur sur écran par rapport à ce qui se retrouve sur le marché, ce projet contribue à l’avancement des connaissances sur l’utilité de la présence de rétroaction dans les simulateurs sur écran lors de la formation infirmière. / Abstract : Background: Feedback on nursing students’ performance when using a screen simulator could contribute to the learning and development of clinical reasoning by supporting metacognition (Zary et al., 2006). To our knowledge, the form and content of this type of feedback remains slightly discussed in scientific literature. Objective: This research project had three objectives. The first was to contribute to the development of a feedback functionality in a screen simulator, the second was to document the perception of its usefulness following a laboratory-guided experimentation with nursing students, and finally, the third objective aimed to describe its overall appreciation of the simulator. Methods: A descriptive research design with mixed methods was used with a convenience sample of nursing students of a university in Quebec. The PROMPTED feedback model (Rudland et al., 2013) was chosen to guide the conception of feedback in the screen simulator. Access to the simulator was via a web link and subsequently, the participants had to complete a self-administered web questionnaire of their appreciation of the feedback provided during the simulation as well as the screen simulator per se. In addition, interviews were conducted to enrich the description of the perceived usefulness of the feedback provided in the screen simulator. Results: Feedback integrated into the screen simulator in accordance with the PROMPTED Model has helped to guide and to inform the students during the activity. The data collected suggest the use of reel-time continuous feedback rather than only giving the answers at the end of the exercise. Conclusion: In addition to the value upgrade of the screen simulator compared to what is on the market, this project has contributed to the advancement of knowledge on the usefulness of feedback in screen simulators in nursing education.

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.

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.