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日本人大学生の日本語作文技術を向上させる訓練プログラムを開発するための予備的研究を行った。刺激文として多義文を30文作成し，それぞれを2つの一義文として書き直す推敲課題を用いた。実験条件として推敲後に正答例を示す条件と正答例を読んだ後に自らの回答を自己採点させる条件を用意し，これを独立変数とした。参加者24人はいずれかの実験条件に無作為に割り当てた。参加者の回答を正答例との一致度で採点し，これを従属変数とした。実験条件の効果は参加者間多層ベースライン法を用いて参加者内で比較した。実験の結果，訓練効果は小さく，刺激文の効果が大きかった。刺激文と参加者の回答を元に推敲行動に及ぼす要因について質的分析を行った。その結果，今後の課題として，多義文の定義を見直すこと，推敲に要する語彙などの下位行動を統制すること，刺激文の理解と一義文の作文を独立して測定すること，刺激文から読み取れる5W1Hについて尋ねるプロンプトを用いた推敲訓練の効果を検証することを提案した。, A preliminary study was conducted to develop a training program to improve Japanese university students’ writing skills. Thirty ambiguous sentences were prepared for proofreading. The task required reading the ambiguous sentences and writing two single-meaning sentences that can be interpreted from each ambiguous sentence. In one experimental condition, the correct rewritten examples were presented just after the proofreading task. In the other condition, participants were asked to score their own rewritten versions by comparing their answers to the correct ones. Twenty-four university students participated in the study. They were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. The dependent variable was the proofreading task score, evaluated by the experimenter, using the same correct examples. The effects of the experimental conditions were examined using a multiple-baseline across subjects design. Both training types showed statistically significant yet educationally small effects. The difficulty of the ambiguous sentences explained a large proportion of the variance in the score. The results suggest that future research should employ a revised definition of an ambiguous sentence, independent measurement of reading comprehension and rewriting, and prompt participants to identify 5W1H (what, why, when, where, who, and how) in ambiguous sentences.

The high failure rate of students in “gateway” science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses has been a persistent problem for biology programs nationwide. Common wisdom contends that addressing this problem requires major curricular overhauls. While desirable, such large systematic changes are often expensive or impractical. We propose an alternative approach: supplementing the regular instruction with brief online modules targeting specific cognitive (learning) and motivational mechanisms. We conducted an intervention study to test the effects of different combinations of cognitive and motivational modules on undergraduate introductory biology students’ learning, motivation, achievement, and intentions to remain in science. Introductory biology students at three research universities were randomly assigned to a no-treatment control condition or one of several combinations of cognition motivation modules. In this article, we describe the modules that are easiest for instructors to integrate with existing course content: worked examples (demonstrations of biology problem solving) and relevance writing (brief open-ended writing assignments about connections of biology concepts to one’s life). Increased student engagement in these modules led to higher motivation, biology reasoning, and course grades. These findings support the effectiveness of delivering brief online supplemental modules on students’ success in introductory biology courses. This easily implemented intervention can utilize online tools such as Blackboard, Canvas, or Moodle and provides an option when major changes to course instruction are not practical.

Den tekniska utvecklingen har varit storskalig i världen och människors vardagsliv harändrats mycket det senaste seklet. I kontrast till detta har den svenska skolan inte sett sammahastiga tekniska utveckling. Samtidigt visar resultat från PISA att elevers resultat i matematiksjunker. Här identifieras två problem som måste lösas. Därför syftade denna undersökningtill att underlätta elevers matematikstudier genom att skapa en ny digital lärmiljö. Lärmiljönkom att kombinera matematiska lösningsförslag med nätcoaching. Det gjordes med hjälp avdet digitala läromedlet Mathleaks och lärplattformen TalkMath. Därefter analysera hur entill-en nätcoaching fungerade i denna nya lärmiljö. Undersökningen syftade även ta reda påhur elever uppfattar lärmiljön och om den kan vara ett komplement till lösningsförslag.Lärmiljön skapades med grund i pedagogiska teorier såsom Vygotskijs sociokulturellaperspektiv, teorier om coaching, synkron kommunikation samt teorier om en-till-ennätcoaching. Två metoder användes för att samla denna data. För det första sparades allakonversationer automatiskt i en databas. För det andra så användes en enkät för att samlaelevernas uppfattning av lärmiljön. Ramverket Undersökande relation användes för attanalysera alla konversationerna mellan elev och coach. Studenterna valdes ut från en svenskgymnasieskola där en av författarna jobbar, eleverna var i åldrarna 15-18 år. Resultatenindikerade att denna nya lärmiljö var ett bra komplement till lösningsförslag. Det drogs ävenslutsatsen att lärmiljön hjälpte elevers kognitiva progression. Undersökningen visar att endigital lärmiljö kan vara ett bra komplement för elever som studerar matematik medlösningsförslag. The digital and technical development of the world have been large-scale and people’s day-to day life has changed immensely the last century. In contrast, the Swedish school system has not been seeing the same rapid technical development. As students’ results in mathematic sare declining an approach to battle this trend can be to apply this technological development on students’ studies in mathematics. Therefore, this thesis sought to ease students’ mathematics studies by creating a digital learning environment. By combining worked examples with online coaching the environment was created through the platforms Mathleaks and TalkMath. Then examine how online one-to-one coaching works in this environment. It also sought to analyse how students perceive this teaching environment and if it can be usedas a complement to worked-examples. The environment was created based on pedagogical theories such as Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective, coach theories, synchronous communication as well as theory around one-to-one online coaching. Two methods were used to gather data. First, the conversations were automatically stored in a database. Secondly, a survey was used to gather the students’ opinion of the teaching environment. The framework Relationship of Inquiry was used to analyse all conversations between students and coaches. Students were chosen from an upper secondary school in the ages of 15-18 where one of the authors worked. Results indicated that the teaching environment that was created was a good complement to worked-examples. The environment was shown to help student’s knowledge progression. This shows that digital teaching environments can be a valuable addition for students when studying mathematics.

We examined if the benefits of generation for long-term learning depend on individual differences in performance expectancies (PEs) prior to learning. We predicted that a greater generative activity (problem-solving) compared to less generative activity (worked-examples) should be more effective for pupils with higher PEs, especially in the long run. As a comparison group for problem-solving, we implemented a special type of worked-examples that decreased engaging in self-explanations, because our main prediction focused on PEs moderating the long-term effectivity of less versus greater generative activities. We tested students’ immediate and delayed performance (after 3 months) using coherent curricular materials on linear functions in a sample of eighth graders (advanced school track). The results were partly in line with our predictions: Although we found no moderation of PE and generative activity, we obtained the predicted 3-way interaction of PE, generative activity, and time. Immediately, greater generative activity (problem-solving) was beneficial for pupils with higher PEs, while for pupils with lower PEs, problem-solving versus worked-examples did not differ. In the delayed test, this pattern reversed: for lower PEs, greater generative activity outperformed less generative activities, but there was no difference for higher PEs. Unexpectedly, the initial advantage of problem-solving for higher PEs could not be maintained, decreasing over three subsequent months, whereas the performance in the worked-example condition remained at a comparable level for higher PEs. The change in performance in the problem-solving condition for lower PEs was descriptively less pronounced than in the worked-example condition, but statistically not different. We further investigated the effects of problem-solving and worked-examples on changes in PEs after learning and after testing, hinting at gradual decrease in PEs and greater metacognitive accuracy in the problem-solving condition due to a reduction of overconfidence.

Research has demonstrated that instruction that relies more heavily on example study is more effective for novices’ learning than instruction consisting of problem solving. However, ‘a heavier reliance on example study’ has been implemented in different ways. For example, worked examples only (WE), example-problem pairs (WE-PS), or problem-example pairs (PS-WE) have been used. This study investigated the effectiveness of all three strategies compared to problem solving only (PS), using electrical circuits troubleshooting tasks; participants were secondary education students who were novices concerning those tasks. Based on prior research, it was hypothesized and confirmed that WE and WE-PS would lead to lower cognitive load during learning and higher learning outcomes than PS. In addition, the open questions of whether there would be any differences between WE and WE-PS, and whether there would be any differences between PS-WE and PS were explored. Results showed no differences between WE and WE-PS or between PS-WE and PS. This study can inform instructional designers on which example-based learning strategies to implement: it does not seem necessary to alternate example study and problem solving, but when doing so, example-problem pairs should be used rather than problem-example pairs.

Four experiments investigated whether the testing effect also applies to the acquisition of problem-solving skills from worked examples. Experiment 1 (n = 120) showed no beneficial effects of testing consisting of isomorphic problem solving or example recall on final test performance, which consisted of isomorphic problem solving, compared to continued study of isomorphic examples. Experiment 2 (n = 124) showed no beneficial effects of testing consisting of identical problem solving compared to restudying an identical example. Interestingly, participants who took both an immediate and a delayed final test outperformed those taking only a delayed test. This finding suggested that testing might become beneficial for retention but only after a certain level of schema acquisition has taken place through restudying several examples. However, experiment 2 had no control condition restudying examples instead of taking the immediate test. Experiment 3 (n = 129) included such a restudy condition, and there was no evidence that testing after studying four examples was more effective for final delayed test performance than restudying, regardless of whether restudied/tested problems were isomorphic or identical. Experiment 4 (n = 75) used a similar design as experiment 3 (i.e., testing/restudy after four examples), but with examples on a different topic and with a different participant population. Again, no evidence of a testing effect was found. Thus, across four experiments, with different types of initial tests, different problem-solving domains, and different participant populations, we found no evidence that testing enhanced delayed test performance compared to restudy. These findings suggest that the testing effect might not apply to acquiring problem-solving skills from worked examples.

One of the main aims of law education in both the Civil (European-Continental) law and Common (Anglo-Saxon) law systems is to teach students to reason about cases. As reviewed in Chapter 1, students experience serious difficulties in learning to reason about cases, which seem to arise from the complexity of the domain, the way in which knowledge is acquired in complex domains, as well as the instructional approach widely used in law schools. This approach often consists of ‘learning by doing’, which means that students have to reason about lots of cases throughout their study by using information sources that professionals also use. The studies presented in Chapters 2 to 4 were designed to gain more insight in the kind of difficulties and the underlying causes that students with differing levels of expertise have when they learn to reason about cases in law school, as well as to investigate the requirements for effective instructional approaches that provide more support and might help to diminish or overcome the experienced difficulties.

One of the main aims of law education in both the Civil (European-Continental) law and Common (Anglo-Saxon) law systems is to teach students to reason about cases. As reviewed in Chapter 1, students experience serious difficulties in learning to reason about cases, which seem to arise from the complexity of the domain, the way in which knowledge is acquired in complex domains, as well as the instructional approach widely used in law schools. This approach often consists of ‘learning by doing’, which means that students have to reason about lots of cases throughout their study by using information sources that professionals also use. The studies presented in Chapters 2 to 4 were designed to gain more insight in the kind of difficulties and the underlying causes that students with differing levels of expertise have when they learn to reason about cases in law school, as well as to investigate the requirements for effective instructional approaches that provide more support and might help to diminish or overcome the experienced difficulties.