Providing adaptive scaffolds to help learners develop self-regulated learning (SRL) processes has been an important goal for intelligent learning environments. Adaptive scaffolding is especially important in open-ended learning environments (OELE), where novice learners often face difficulties in completing their learning tasks. This paper presents a systematic framework for adaptive scaffolding in Betty's Brain, a learning-by-teaching OELE for middle school science, where students construct a causal model to teach a virtual agent, generically named Betty. We evaluate the adaptive scaffolding framework and discuss its implications on the development of more effective scaffolds for SRL in OELEs. We detect key cognitive/metacognitive inflection points, i.e., instances where students' behaviors and performance change as they work on their learning tasks. At such inflection points, Mr. Davis (a mentor agent) or Betty (the teachable agent) provide conversational feedback, focused on strategies to help students become productive learners. We conduct a classroom study with 98 middle schoolers to analyze the impact of adaptive scaffolds on students' learning behaviors and performance. Adaptive scaffolding produced mixed results, with some scaffolds (viz., strategic hints that supported debugging and assessment of causal models) being generally more useful to students than others (viz., encouragement prompts). We also note differences in learning behaviors of High and Low performers after receiving scaffolds. Overall, our findings suggest how adaptive scaffolding in OELEs like Betty's Brain can be further improved to narrow the gap between High and Low performers.
翻译:提供适应性脚架以帮助学习者发展自我调节的学习(SRL)进程是智能学习环境的一个重要目标。适应性脚架在开放学习环境中特别重要,在开放学习环境中(OELE),新学习者在完成学习任务时常常面临困难。本文为贝蒂大脑的适应性脚架提供了一个系统框架,贝蒂大脑是中学科学的逐级教学工具,学生们在中学科学中构建了一个因果模型,教授一个名为贝蒂的虚拟代理人。我们评估了适应性脚架框架,并讨论了该框架对开发更高效的履带框架的影响。我们用98个中学生的感知/感知性触觉感应点,例如学生们在学习任务时的行为和性能变化。在感知点上,Davis先生(导师代理人)或贝蒂(有用的代理人)提供了对话反馈,侧重于帮助学生成为生产性学习者的战略。我们用98个中学生进行课堂研究,以分析适应性变现性动作的影响,以及高龄学生们进行更深的感官学习。我们进行一些感官的感官的感官和感官的感官的感官的感官学习。