Scaffolding middle school students' content knowledge and ill-structured problem solving in a problem-based hypermedia learning environment

摘要

This study focused on two areas under the overarching theme of the effects ofdomain-general and domain-specific scaffolds with different levels of support,continuous or faded. First, the study investigated the effects of scaffolds on learning ofscientific content and problem-solving outcomes. Second, the study examined whetherstudents? prior knowledge and meta cognitive skills predict their success in problemsolving across different scaffolding conditions.A total of nineteen classes were randomly assigned to one of the four scaffoldingconditions: domain-general continuous (DG-C), domain-general faded (DG-F), domain specificcontinuous (DS-C), and domain-specific faded (DS-F). Each class had access todifferent worksheets depending on the scaffolding condition they had been assigned. Allstudents engaged in four problem-solving activities for thirteen class periods. Students?scores on a multiple-choice pretest, post test, inventory of meta cognitive self-regulation,and four recommendation forms were analyzed. Results of the study revealed that students? content knowledge in all conditionssignificantly increased over the thirteen class periods. However, the continuous domain specificcondition outperformed the other conditions on the post test. Although domain generalscaffolds were not as effective as domain-specific scaffolds on learning ofscientific content and problem representation, they helped students develop solutions,make strong justifications, and monitor their learning. Unlike domain-specific scaffolds,domain-general scaffolds helped students transfer problem-solving skills even when theywere faded. In terms of individual differences, results indicated that while students withlower prior knowledge and lower meta cognitive skills benefited from the domain generalcontinuous condition, students with lower regulation of cognition benefited fromthe domain-general faded condition. Moreover, while students with lower priorknowledge, lower knowledge of cognition, and lower problem representation benefitedfrom the domain-specific continuous condition, students with lower problemrepresentation benefited from the domain-specific faded condition. In contrast, results ofthe study suggested that scaffolds did not substantially benefit the students with higherprior knowledge and higher meta cognitive skills. Several suggestions are discussed formaking further improvements in the design of scaffolds in order to facilitate ill-structuredproblem solving in hypermedia learning environments.