Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
static, and dynamic representations of information) is presented in the center of
the interface. The main communication dialogue box (between the learner and the
environment) is found directly below the content box. The pedagogical agents are
available and reside in the top right-hand corner of the interface. In this case, Mary
the Monitor is available to assist learners through the process of evaluating their
understanding of the content. Below the agent box is a list of SRL processes that
learners can use throughout the learning session. Specifically, learners can select
the SRL process they are about to use by highlighting it. The goal of having learners
select the processes is to enhance metacognitive awareness of the processes used
during learning and to facilitate the environment's ability to trace, model, and fos-
ter learning. In addition to learner-initiated SR, the agent can prompt learners to
engage in planning, monitoring, or strategy use under appropriate conditions traced
by MetaTutor.
The purpose of the MetaTutor project is to examine the effectiveness of ani-
mated pedagogical agents as external regulatory agents used to detect, trace, model,
and foster students' self-regulatory processes during learning about complex sci-
ence topics. MetaTutor is in its infancy, and thus the algorithms to guide feedback
to the student have not yet been developed or tested. The challenge will be to provide
feedback on both the accuracy of the content as well as the appropriateness of the
strategies being used by the student. Current machine learning methods for detect-
ing students' evolving mental models of the circulatory system are being tested
and implemented (Rus, Lintean, & Azevedo, 2009), as well as specific macro- and
microadaptive tutoring methods based on detailed system traces of learners' navi-
gational paths through the MetaTutor system (Witherspoon et al., 2009). In the next
section, we present data collected from an initial study using MetaTutor.
Preliminary Data on SRL with MetaTutor
During the past year we collected data using the current nonadaptive version with
66 college students and 18 high school students. The data show that the students
have little declarative knowledge of key SRL processes. They also tend to learn rel-
atively little about the circulatory system in 2 h sessions when they need to regulate
their own learning (Azevedo et al., 2008, 2009). In particular, both college and high
school students show small to medium effect sizes (
d
=
0.47-0.66) for pretest-
posttest shifts across several researcher-developed measures tapping declarative,
inferential, and mental models of the body systems.
Newly analyzed data from the
concurrent think-aloud protocols
with the non-
adaptive version of MetaTutor show some very important results that will be used
to design and develop the adaptive version. The coded concurrent think-aloud data
from 44 (out of 60) participants are also extremely informative in terms of the fre-
quency of use of each SRL class (e.g., monitoring) and the processes within each
class (e.g., FOK and JOL are part of monitoring). Overall, the data indicate that
learning strategies were deployed most often (77% of all SRL processes deployed
during the learning task) followed by metacognitive judgments (nearly 16% of all
