Interactive Computer-Supported Learning in Mathematics: A Comparison of Three Learning Programs on Trigonometry

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cueing and prior knowledge on learning and mental effort of students studying an animation with narration. This study employed a 2 (no cueing vs. visual cueing) × 2 (low vs. high prior knowledge) between‐subjects factorial design. The results revealed a significant interaction effect between prior knowledge and cueing on learning. Low prior knowledge learners had higher scores after studying an instructional animation with visual cues, compared to those who studied the same instructional animation without visual cues. Conversely, when cues were not provided, high prior knowledge learners outperformed those high prior knowledge learners who studied with the cued version of an instructional animation. These results indicated that the effects of cueing in an instructional animation change depending on the learners' level of prior knowledge. Specifically, low prior knowledge learners benefited more when visual cues were provided, whereas cues did not facilitate learning for high prior knowledge learners.

This study investigated the effect of adding metacognitive prompts before a self-explanation task in video example learning using multimodal data collection techniques such as eye tracking, screen recording. The study also examined whether students’ prior knowledge played a moderating role. A total of 116 undergraduate and graduate students watched three video examples on chemistry topics and completed a self-explanation task in a computer-based learning environment. Participants were assigned randomly to one of two conditions: metacognitive prompts versus no-metacognitive prompts. Those in the metacognitive prompts condition demonstrated higher learning performance, better quality of explanation, and increased attention paid to the learning content than those in the no-metacognitive prompts condition. Moreover, a moderated mediation analysis showed that metacognitive prompts improved students’ self-efficacy and then improved their learning performance. Prior knowledge was found to play a moderating role in the relationship between metacognitive prompts and learning performance. The results of this study show that students with low prior knowledge benefit more from metacognitive prompts added before self-explanation tasks in video-based learning. When using video examples in teaching, it is therefore recommended that students be provided with metacognitive prompts before completing self-explanation tasks, especially those with lower prior knowledge, as this can enhance their resulting self-efficacy, increasing their engagement in self-regulating behaviors and thereby lead to improvements in their later learning performance.

IntroductionClinical reasoning has been fostered with varying case formats including the use of virtual patients. Existing literature points to different conclusions regarding which format is most beneficial for learners with diverse levels of prior knowledge. We designed our study to better understand which case format affects clinical reasoning outcomes and cognitive load, dependent on medical students’ prior knowledge.MethodsOverall, 142 medical students (3 rd to 6 th year) were randomly assigned to either a whole case or serial cue case format. Participants worked on eight virtual patients in their respective case format. Outcomes included diagnostic accuracy, knowledge, and cognitive load.ResultsWe found no effect of case format on strategic knowledge scores pre- vs post-test (whole case learning gain = 3, 95% CI. -.01 to .01, serial cue learning gain = 3, 95% CI. -.06 to .00 p = .50). In both case formats, students with high baseline knowledge (determined by median split on the pre-test in conceptual knowledge) benefitted from learning with virtual patients (learning gain in strategic knowledge = 5, 95% CI .03 to .09, p = .01) while students with low prior knowledge did not (learning gain = 0, 95%CI −.02 to .02). We found no difference in diagnostic accuracy between experimental conditions (difference = .44, 95% CI −.96 to .08, p = .22), but diagnostic accuracy was higher for students with high prior knowledge compared to those with low prior knowledge (difference = .8, 95% CI 0.31 to 1.35, p < .01). Students with low prior knowledge experienced higher extraneous cognitive load than students with high prior knowledge (multiple measurements, p < .01).ConclusionsThe whole case and serial cue case formats alone did not affect students’ knowledge gain or diagnostic accuracy. Students with lower knowledge experienced increased cognitive load and appear to have learned less from their interaction with virtual patients. Cognitive load should be taken into account when attempting to help students learn clinical reasoning with virtual patients, especially for students with lower knowledge.

Students’ prior knowledge contributes to their e-book reading comprehension and might affect the usability of an e-book system. This study explored the influence of university students’ prior knowledge on the usability of an e-book system termed “BookRoll,” which was introduced in the context of an information and technology course in this study. One hundred first-year students (36 male and 64 female students) at a university in central Taiwan participated in this study. Students previewed the lecture slides and used e-book functions such as bookmarks, highlights, and memos during seven weekly lessons. Students’ prior knowledge in the domain of information and technology and the Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use (USE) dimensions of the BookRoll system were collected before and after the treatment course, respectively. This study revealed that students’ prior domain knowledge had no significant effect on the usability of the e-book system. In general, students’ ratings of BookRoll’s usability were high. Positive qualitative feedback across categories was given by students with high and low prior knowledge; however, some negative but constructive qualitative feedback was also provided. In addition, a short questionnaire to measure the USE dimensions of an e-book system for undergraduate users was developed and provided.

Preparatory or bridging courses are widespread and have a long tradition at universities. They are designed to increase students’ academic success – in particular of students with low prior knowledge – and to reduce dropout rates. However, critics of these short and compact bridging courses complain that preparatory courses are not able to fill in content gaps sufficiently in a few weeks. Despite the high prevalence of university bridging courses, little is currently known about the sustainable learning efficacy of these courses. The aim of this study was to examine the short- and long-term effects of a traditional chemistry bridging course on students’ success in the end of the semester examination of first-year chemistry students. For this purpose, students’ learning outcomes were analyzed at the end of the two-week bridging course of students with different prior knowledge. Furthermore, it was investigated in an intervention-reference-group design whether students’ exam results at the end of the first semester differ from participants of the bridging course and students who did not participate in the course. The results of the study reveal that students with low prior knowledge manage to close their content gaps in just a few weeks and to adjust differences in prior knowledge before starting their studies. At the end of the first semester, bridging course participants achieve significantly better exam results than their fellow students who did not enroll in the bridging course. However, mainly students with high prior knowledge seem to benefit from participating in the longer term. In the case of students with low prior knowledge, participation do not lead to better exam results compared to students without participation. Findings of the study can provide a basis for university teachers as well as university development experts to establish university bridging courses as well as to optimize existing offers.

In-game learning supports aim to help students solve game levels (i.e., game-related supports), and connect to underlying content (i.e., content-related and hybrid supports). Students with different levels of prior knowledge may have different needs for in-game supports. In this study, we designed a 2D physics game with game-related, content-related, and hybrid supports to explore the relationships among students’ prior knowledge, their access of learning supports, learning outcomes, and game performance. Our sample included 199 ninth- to eleventh-grade students from a K-12 school in the southeastern US. Our findings indicated that students, regardless of their degree of prior knowledge, tended to access supports that directly addressed the solution of game levels (game-related supports) rather than those which presented content (content-related and hybrid supports). We found that the more frequently students accessed the hybrid supports, the greater their knowledge acquisition, and the more game levels they solved. We found no significant relations between the access of game-related and content-related supports and students’ learning and game performance. Moreover, students with high prior knowledge tended to use hybrid supports more frequently than those with low prior knowledge. Implications of our findings and suggestions regarding future research are discussed.

A wealth of researches has indicated that retrieval practice can be used as an effective means to improve memory. Recently the effects of retrieval practice have captured the attention of contemporary researchers who are interested in educational applications of retrieval practice. Some researchers have examined the effectiveness of retrieval practice relative to elaborative studying with concept mapping, and found that practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping which has received comment and query by researchers advocating constructivism who thought, compared with practice retrieval, concept mapping is too complex to master. In view of these criticism, the current research examined the effectiveness of retrieval practice and concept mapping from the perspective of cognitive load, it is hypothesized that the intrinsic load of study task which depends on learners’ prior knowledge level has different influence on retrieval practice and concept mapping, and the concept mapping strategy is more complex than retrieval practice, so it could produce more extraneous load on learner and influence the effectiveness. Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. In experiment 1, 120 college students were engaged in a 2 (prior knowledge level: high vs. low) × 3 (study strategy type: retrieval practice vs. concept mapping and repeated study) between-subjects design of experiment, which was aimed to study the different influence of prior knowledge level on the effectiveness of three types of strategies. In experiment 2, 43 college students participated in a within-subjects design of experiment, each student completed a partial concept mapping of one science text and practiced retrieval of a second text which was designed to study the influence of strategy’s complexity on strategy’s effectiveness. The results indicated that on correct rate of memory retention and transfer, the main effect of prior knowledge level wasn't significant, but there was an interaction between learning strategies and prior knowledge level: under the condition of retrieval practice strategy, there is no significant difference on the correct rate of retention and transfer between participates with high prior knowledge and participates with low prior knowledge; as the concept mapping strategy concerned, the participates with high prior knowledge were significantly higher than participates with low prior knowledge on the correct rate of retention and transfer. In addition, the complexity of the strategy would increase learners' extraneous load, but it didn't have decisive influence on the effectiveness of the strategy. In terms of result, it was concluded that the reason why retrieval practice could produce more memory retention and transfer than concept mapping is not because of that its strategy is easier to be master, it is that the concept mapping strategy was very dependent on learner's prior knowledge level. Relatively, retrieval practice is not dependent on learner's prior knowledge level. The results have some important implications. Firstly, retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote retention and transfer, it indeed can enhance subsequent recall more than concept mapping. Thus, educators should pay more attention to the effectiveness of retrieval practice rather than view it as an assessment device to measure what a student knows. Secondly, the findings support the theory that retrieval practice enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes.

Prior knowledge and cognitive styles are considered important determinants in adaptive hypermedia learning systems (AHLSs) as they influence how learners select information to put into memory. However, there is a need to investigate how they influence learner performance and perceptions prior to comparing them and establishing if they can be used together to maximise learning in AHLSs. To this end, this study investigated the effects of prior knowledge on the use of AHLSs to set the foundation for the comparison. 60 students participated in this study. The results showed that, in general, adapting to prior knowledge improves learner performance and perceptions, especially for users with low prior knowledge. However, the results also indicated that the relative improvement in learner performance is significantly higher than that of perceptions when using the AHLS. The implications of the design of AHLSs are discussed by the paper.KeywordsLearning performancePerceptionsNoviceExpertsEvaluationCognitive stylesLearning styles

Effect of prior domain knowledge and headings on processing of informative text

The purpose of this study was to examine how prior knowledge of cellular transport influenced how high school students in the USA viewed and interpreted graphic representations of this topic. The participants were Advanced Placement Biology students (n = 65); each participant had previously taken a biology course in high school. After assessing prior knowledge using the Diffusion and Osmosis Diagnostic Test, two graphical representations of cellular transport processes were selected for analysis. Three different methods of data collection—eye tracking, interviews, and questionnaires—were used to investigate differences in perceived salient features of the graphics, interpretations of the graphics, and processing difficulty experienced while attending to and interpreting the graphics. The results from the eye tracking data, interviews, and instructional representation questionnaires were triangulated and revealed differences in how high and low prior knowledge students attended to and interpreted particle differences, concentration gradient, the role of adenosine triphosphate , endocytosis and exocytosis, and text labels and captions. Without adequate domain knowledge, low prior knowledge students focused on the surface features of the graphics (ex. differences in particle colour) to build an understanding of the concepts represented. On the other hand, with more abundant and better‐organised domain knowledge, high prior knowledge students were more likely to attend to the thematically relevant content in the graphics, which enhanced their understanding. The findings of this study offer a more complete understanding of how differentially prepared learners view and interpret graphics and have the potential to inform instructional design.

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of: (1)the problem-based learning (PBL) method; (2)the direct teaching method; (3)the PBL method compared with the direct teaching method, for the low prior knowledge students; (4)the PBL method compared with the direct teaching method, for the high prior knowledge students. This research is a quasi experimental with the pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design. The independent variabel was teaching method, the score on pre-test as a covariate, and the students. achievement as the dependent variable. The research population comprised year XI students of the Light Vehicle Engineering SMK Muhammadiyah Prambanan, totaling 137 students, divided into four classes. This study used a sample of two XI classes, totaling 64 students. The instrument was an achievement test in the multiple-choice form. The validation was conducted by analyzing the validity of the test items, difficulty level, discrimination index, and the functioning of the detractors. The result was that the 40 items used were all valid and the reliability was high (á=0.921). The data were analyzed using the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). This study conclude that, in the competence of repairing the cooling system by considering the students' score on pre-test as prior knowledge: (1) on the whole, the PBL method is more effective than the direct teaching methods, (2) the students who have high prior knowledge are more effective to be taught using the PBL method than the direct teaching method, (3) the students who have low prior knowledge are not difference in effectiveness to be taught using the PBL method and the direct teaching method, and (4) there is no difference in effectiveness between low prior knowledge students and high prior knowledge students who were taught using the PBL method.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of signaling and prior knowledge on the cognitive loads, motivations, and learning of college students in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) environment. This study applied a 2 (signaling vs. no signaling) by 2 (high vs. low prior knowledge levels) between-subjects factorial design. The results revealed that signaling directed the attention of students with low prior knowledge levels, effectively helped them select relevant information and reduced their cognitive loads, whereas signaling had no significant effect on the cognitive loads, intrinsic motivation, and learning performance of learners with high levels of prior knowledge. These results suggest that IVR environments for students with low prior knowledge levels should reduce cognitive load and improve learning, and signals in the form of text annotations and color changes are recommended for additional support. Students with high prior knowledge levels do not require additional signals to support learning; therefore, the IVR environment needs to be designed in such a way as to be tailored to the individual differences of students.

The goal of this study was to use eye-tracking and log-file data to investigate the impact of prior knowledge on college students’ (N = 194, with a subset of n = 30 for eye tracking and sequence mining analyses) fixations on (i.e., looking at) self-regulated learning-related areas of interest (i.e., specific locations on the interface) and on the sequences of engaging in cognitive and metacognitive self-regulated learning processes during learning with MetaTutor, an Intelligent Tutoring System that teaches students about the human circulatory system. Results revealed that there were no significant differences in fixations on single areas of interest by the prior knowledge group students were assigned to; however there were significant differences in fixations on pairs of areas of interest, as evidenced by eye-tracking data. Furthermore, there were significant differences in sequential patterns of engaging in cognitive and metacognitive self-regulated learning processes by students’ prior knowledge group, as evidenced from log-file data. Specifically, students with high prior knowledge engaged in processes containing cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies whereas students with low prior knowledge did not. These results have implications for designing adaptive intelligent tutoring systems that provide individualized scaffolding and feedback based on individual differences, such as levels of prior knowledge.

The learning achievement of high school students of Malang city in physics was still low, thus the appropriate learning strategies was necessaryto optimize the physics learning achievement. V diagram procedural scaffoldingin Group Investigation was designed with the aim to optimize student learning achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in learning achievement of groups of students who learn through Scaffolding Procedural strategies in Group Investigation and groups of students who are studying with Group Investigation, to examine differences in student achievement between thosewith high and low prior knowledge levels, and to examine the interaction between learning strategies (procedural scaffolding in GI and GI) and initial knowledge of students towardlearning achievement. The method used in this study wasquasi-experimental.The design used in this study was Two Factorial Design consisted of two experimental classes and two control classes each. The results indicated that learning achievement group of students who learn through proceduralscaffolding in Group Investigation was higher than the group of students who are studying with Group Investigation. The learning achievements of students with high prior knowledge surpassed those with low prior knowledge. Last, there was an interaction between the learning strategies and prior knowledge of students toward learning achievement.

Background:A five-stage prediction-observation-explanation inquiry-based learning (FPOEIL) model was developed to improve students’ scientific learning performance. In order to intensify the science learning effect, the repertory grid technology-assisted learning (RGTL) approach and the collaborative learning (CL) approach were utilized.Material and methods:A quasi-experimental design study was conducted to examine whether the students who used the FPOEIL model only had better learning performances than those who used FPOEIL with RGTL or CL. This study adopted purposive sampling, selecting 123 fourth grade students. The experimental process was conducted during five weeks.Results:It was found that the FPOEIL model improved the students’ learning performance. Moreover, the low prior knowledge students who learned science using FPOEIL with RGTL or CL had better learning performances than those who learned using the FPOEIL model only, and the effectiveness showed no significant differences between the low prior knowledge students and the high prior knowledge students.Conclusions:Using the FPOEIL model, the positive effects were intensified in the continuous inquiry-based learning activities and feedback-correction process for the students learning science. The RGTL approach helped the students find, remember, and comprehend scientific knowledge. In the CL process, the students spent more time discussing how to integrate clues to answer the science question.