Investigating the Effect of Meta-Cognitive Scaffolding for Learning by Teaching
Matsuda, N., Griger, C. L., Barbalios, N., Stylianides, G., Cohen, W. W., & Koedinger, K. R. (2014)
This paper investigates the effect of meta-cognitive help in the context of learning by teaching. Students learned to solve algebraic equations by tutoring a teachable agent, called SimStudent, using an online learning environment, called APLUS. A version of APLUS was developed to provide meta-cognitive help on what problems students should teach, as well as when to quiz SimStudent. A classroom study comparing APLUS with and without the meta-cognitive help was conducted with 173 seventh to ninth grade students. The data showed that students with the meta-cognitive help showed better problem selection and scored higher on the post-test than those who tutored SimStudent without the meta-cognitive help. These results suggest that, when carefully de-signed, learning by teaching can support students to not only learn cognitive skills but also employ meta-cognitive skills for effective tutoring.
My primary responsibilities on the SimStudent project concerned improvements in cognitive modeling of a computer agent through direct observation of user interaction and data mining.
Pre-process output data from Oracle database to discover patterns and bugs within the production files
Conduct descriptive and inferential analyses, and produce data visualizations for PI team on monthly basis
Analyze reliability on measures of human student knowledge gains
Examine cognitive fidelity by disentangling computer agent errors that impact human student’s learning and validating production rules using Minerva via Cygwin
Manage projects through recruiting stakeholders, training research assistants, create and maintain IRB documentation, scheduling and managing classroom and lab studies, data analysis, journaling all procedures
Worked closely with programmer to fine tune production rules and interface based on analyses