Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
planning
,
monitoring
,
learning strategies
, methods of
handling task difficulties and
demands
, and
interest
(see Azevedo et al., 2008 for a sample of the SRL processes
and for details). These studies have shown some interesting developmental differ-
ences. Compared to college students, high school students tend to use fewer and
less-sophisticated self-regulatory processes to regulate their learning with hyper-
media. Specifically, they fail to create subgoals, monitor aspects of the learning
environment (e.g., content evaluation, CE), or evaluate their own cognitive processes
(e.g., feeling of knowing, FOK) or emerging understanding (e.g., JOL).
Furthermore, they use less effective learning strategies such as copying information
verbatim from the learning environment to their notes. The data also indicate that
certain key self-regulatory processes related to planning, metacognitive monitoring,
and learning strategies are not used during the integration process with multiple rep-
resentations during hypermedia learning. This leads to declarative knowledge gains
but failure to show qualitative mental model shifts related to understanding these
complex topics.
Students in the fixed scaffolding conditions tend to regulate learning by monitor-
ing activities that deal with the hypermedia learning environment (other than their
own cognition), and use more ineffective learning strategies. By contrast, external
regulation by a human tutor leads students to regulate their learning by activating
prior knowledge and creating subgoals; monitoring their cognitive system by using
FOK and JOL; using effective strategies such as summarizing, making inferences,
drawing, and engaging in knowledge elaboration; and, not surprisingly, engaging in
an inordinate amount of help-seeking from the human tutor (Azevedo et al., 2005a,
2006; Greene & Azevedo, 2009).
In a recent study, Azevedo and colleagues (2008) examined the effectiveness of
SRL and externally regulated learning (ERL) on college students' learning about
a science topic with hypermedia during a 40 min session. A total of 82 col-
lege students with little knowledge of the topic were randomly assigned either to
the SRL or ERL condition. Students in the SRL condition regulated their own
learning, while students in the ERL condition had access to a human tutor who
facilitated their SRL. We converged product (pretest-posttest declarative knowledge
and qualitative shifts in participants' mental models) with process (think-aloud)
data to examine the effectiveness of SRL versus ERL. Analysis of the declarative
knowledge measures showed that the ERL condition group mean was statistically
significantly higher than the group mean for the SRL condition on the label-
ing and flow diagram tasks. There were no statistically significant differences
between groups on the matching task, but both groups showed statistically signif-
icant increases in performance. Further analyses showed that the odds of being
in a higher mental model posttest group were decreased by 65% for the SRL
group as compared to the ERL group. In terms of SRL behavior, participants in
the SRL condition engaged in more selecting of new information sources, reread-
ing, summarizing, free searching, and enacting of control over the context of their
learning. In comparison, the ERL participants engaged in more activation of prior
knowledge, utilization of FOK and JOL, monitoring of their progress toward goals,
drawing, hypothesizing, coordination of information sources, and expressing task
difficulty.
