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learning - Academic Conferences Limited

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Stella Lee et al.<br />

knowledge. Meta knowledge in terms of key study skills for studying programming have been selected<br />

as: note taking skill, reflection and discussion skill, conceptualization skill, and problem solving skill.<br />

For example, within the “Watching” activity, the key study skill we emphases is “note taking”. Learners<br />

can choose to access this supplementary material at any given time during his/her study. The design<br />

consideration is that the key study skills appear as an unobtrusive interface that sits on the upperright-hand-corner<br />

of the main content. Learners can choose to engage and learn how the “note<br />

taking” skill helps with the “watching” activity (i.e. how to take better notes while watching a tutorial<br />

video online and what are the appropriate tool to use for note taking), or he/she can just ignore it and<br />

carry on with watching the YouTube tutorial video on its own.<br />

One pre-test has been developed with 25 questions for domain-knowledge and 20 questions for<br />

meta-knowledge (study skills). In this test we are looking at two types of data:<br />

Test score for the domain-knowledge - to gauge how much a student has already know about<br />

control structures in java programming prior to this unit. This test score will be compared to the<br />

post-test domain-knowledge test score.<br />

Test score for meta-knowledge (study skills) - to gauge a student’s study skill competency. This is<br />

more of a self-report rather than an objective measurement of specific study skills. This test score<br />

will be compared to the post-test meta-knowledge test score to identify whether the study skills<br />

provided help improve students’ overall study strategies and make them aware of certain metalevel<br />

skills.<br />

Similar to the pre-test, one post test is available with 25 questions for domain knowledge and 20<br />

questions for meta-knowledge (study skills). It is designed to measure the efficacy of each <strong>learning</strong><br />

mode. Questions are generated based on the content from select mode of each <strong>learning</strong> concept. For<br />

each answer, the system will then give feedback and suggestions according to the test results, and<br />

direct the student to focus more in the <strong>learning</strong> mode in which the student is weak. The aim is to help<br />

learners to become more efficient and aware in self-monitoring their <strong>learning</strong>.<br />

It is intended that there will be an end-of-unit survey and a follow-up structured interviews with 6-10<br />

participants two weeks upon the completion of the study. The survey aims to measure learner<br />

experience, usability, user satisfaction and perceived controllability of the system. At the end of the<br />

survey, we will invite participants to take part in a 40-min structured interview using Adobe Connect.<br />

Participation in the interview is entirely voluntary and has no effect on their grades. The purpose of<br />

the interview is to discover more details about the learners’ attitudes and impression about the<br />

experiment, and give learners a chance to elaborate on the survey results. Questions will also be<br />

geared towards whether they find the system and the options provided helpful, in both the domain<br />

specific content as well as the meta-cognitive activities, i.e., study skills.<br />

3.3 Research questions<br />

This study was designed to answer the following research questions:<br />

How would the two named <strong>learning</strong> theories, ELT and SRL, be useful in the production of<br />

constructive adaptive system?<br />

How might such a system be tested and evaluated in a real context?<br />

What are the effects of such a system on:<br />

Domain-knowledge competency<br />

Meta-knowledge competency<br />

What are the effects of such a system on:<br />

Learners’ experience<br />

System usability<br />

User satisfaction<br />

Perceived controllability<br />

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