The benefits of incorporating scaffolds that promote strategies of self-regulated learning (SRL) to help student learning are widely studied and recognised in the literature. However, the best methods for incorporating them in educational technologies and empirical evidence about which scaffolds are most beneficial to students are still emerging. In this paper, we report our findings from conducting an in-the-field controlled experiment with 797 post-secondary students to evaluate the impact of incorporating scaffolds for promoting SRL strategies in the context of assisting students in creating novel content, also known as learnersourcing. The experiment had five conditions, including a control group that had access to none of the scaffolding strategies for creating content, three groups each having access to one of the scaffolding strategies (planning, externally-facilitated monitoring and self-assessing) and a group with access to all of the aforementioned scaffolds. The results revealed that the addition of the scaffolds for SRL strategies increased the complexity and effort required for creating content, were not positively assessed by learners and led to slight improvements in the quality of the generated content. We discuss the implications of our findings for incorporating SRL strategies in educational technologies.
Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
1. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation:
A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
1
Hatim Lahza
h.lahza@uq.edu.au
A/prof. Hassan Khosravi
h.khosravi@uq.edu.au
A/prof. Gianluca Demartini
g.demartini@uq.edu.au
Prof. Dragan Gasevic
Dragan.Gasevic@monash.edu
2. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
2
Introduction Results Discussion Questions
Method
3. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 3
Motivation
Self-regulation scaffolds are challenging in large classes
Computer supported learning environments help scaling scaffolding
• How should SRL scaffolds be implemented?
• Does the context or task matter?
• What SRL phases are most important than
others?
4. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 4
Our study
Objectives
• Designing interfaces (interventions) for an online learning environment based on self-
regulated learning (SRL) strategies to help learners create high-quality resources
• Conducting an in-the-field experiment to evaluate our design
5. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 5
Our study
Self-regulated learning (SRL)
• Essential learning skill
• Most common SRL models are cyclic
processes and have preparatory,
performance and appraisal phases [1]
• Learner as an agent
• Evidence of the effectiveness in online
learning environments is still needed
[1] Ernesto Panadero. 2017. A review of self-regulated learning: Six models and four directions for research. Frontiers in psychology 8 (Apr 2017), 422.
[2] Puustinen, M., & Pulkkinen, L. (2001). Models of self-regulated learning: A review. Scandinavian journal of educational research, 45(3), 269-286.
6. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 6
Our study
Learnersourcing
• Learner as a partner in creating learning
resources [1][2]
• Benefits for learner and instructor [3]
• High-quality resources
• Quality of resources varies
• The creation interface might be part of the
issue
[1] HassanKhosravi,GianlucaDemartini,ShaziaSadiq,andDraganGasevic.2021. Charting the Design and Analytics Agenda of Learnersourcing Systems. In 11thInternational Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference. ACM, 32–42.
[2] JuhoKim.2015.Learnersourcing:improvinglearningwithcollectivelearneractivity. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[3] AaronMcDonald,HeathMcGowan,MollieDollinger,RyanNaylor,andHassan Khosravi. 2021. Repositioning students as co-creators of curriculum for online learning resources. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (2021), 102– 118.
7. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
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Introduction Results Discussion Questions
Method
8. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 8
RiPPLE
• Adaptive
educational system
• Enables
learnersourcing
• Three main
activities: creation,
evaluation and
practice
Process overview
Overview Main creation interface
9. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 9
Interventions for SRL Strategies
• SRL strategies:
• Planning then creating
• Externally-facilitated monitoring
• Self-assessing after creating
• All the above strategies combined together
• An interface was created for each strategy
Interventions
10. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 10
Planning Then Creating
• Six main elements
• We hypothesis that the
planner can benefit both
students who have a clear
idea of what to create and
those looking for new ideas
Overview
Interface
- Piazza
- Tutorials
- Lecture Slides
- Table
- Video
11. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 11
Planning Then Creating
• The presentation includes:
• Definitions
• Examples
• Tips
• Students could view it at
any time
Overview Bloom’s taxonomy
12. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 12
Externally-facilitated monitoring
• Aims for providing
monitoring elements
• Three main elements
• Best practices for high-
quality MCQs from the
literature
• Presented as tick boxes
Overview
Interface
13. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 13
Self-assessing after creating
• Added as a last step
• Prompt students to review
and revise their resources
• Two main elements:
• Self-assessment
according to the peer
assessment set of
criteria
• Reflection
Overview Interface
14. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 14
Experimental Design
RQ1. How do the proposed interventions
change the process and effort required for
creating a learning resource?
RQ2. How beneficial do students find the
proposed interventions?
RQ3. What is the impact of the proposed
interventions on the quality of the resources
created by students?
• In-the-field randomised control experiment
• Five conditions:
• Control (A)
• planning then creating (B)
• monitoring while creating (C)
• self-assessing after creating (D)
• All (E)
Settings Research questions
15. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 15
Experimental Design
• Location: The University of Queensland
• Course: Neuroscience & Information systems
• Level: Undergraduate
• Number of students: 797
• Consent required: Yes
• Purpose of use: Assessment, but engagement with the intervention
was optional
• Duration: Multiple rounds over 6-7 weeks
• Contribution to grade: 10% (e.g., create, moderate and practice)
• Average resource (μ ± σ):
• Both courses: 2.39 ± 1.22
• Considered engaged: If all the intervention components used
Context & Participants
16. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 16
Experimental Design
17. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 17
Experimental Design
Metrics and Analysis (Combined data- both courses)
• Process mining using trace data
• Quantitative analysis using duration (min)
on the elements of the interfaces
RQ1. Impact on the Process and Effort:
• Effectiveness rating (i.e., 5-point scale)
• Written feedback
• Quantitative analysis
• Qualitative: general inductive approach [1]
& sentiment analysis
RQ2. Impact on Student Perceptions: RQ3. Impact on Performance:
• Quantitative analysis using resource
quality rating provided by the
system
RQ1. How do the proposed interventions change the
process and effort required for creating a learning
resource?
RQ2. How beneficial do students find the proposed
interventions?
RQ3. What is the impact of the proposed interventions
on the quality of the resources created by students?
[1] David R. Thomas. 2006. A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data. Am J Eval 27, 2 (Jun 2006), 237–246.
18. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
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Introduction Results Discussion Questions
Method
19. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 19
Impact on the Process and Effort
Creation processes
Time spent by the experimental groups vs time spent by the control group
Treatment group (vs
control)
Mann-Whitney U test Duration- Mdn (min) Effect
Condition B p < .05 * 15.73
Condition C
Condition D
Condition E
p = .38
p = .18
p < .01 *
11.21
13.31
19.59
(Control =
12.23 min)
[1] David R. Thomas. 2006. A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data. Am J Eval 27, 2 (Jun 2006), 237–246.
1
RQ1. How do the proposed interventions change the process and effort required for creating a learning resource?
20. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 20
Impact on Student Perceptions
• Most effective interface based
on the rating: (μ ± σ)
1. Control (4.62 ± .61)
2. Condition C (4.45 ± .74)
3. Condition D (4.43 ± .80)
4. Condition B (4.16 ± .99)
5. Condition E (4.25 ± 0.98)
Quantitative
RQ2. How beneficial do students find the proposed interventions?
21. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 21
Impact on Student Perceptions
• Th control group found the
creation interface more
effective than the treatment
groups
• The treatment groups’
comments were mostly about
technology
• Conditions B and E
encountered technical issues
• Some students questioned the
pedagogical benefits
Qualitative
RQ2. How beneficial do students find the proposed interventions?
22. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 22
Impact on Performance
Figure 3: Overview of the quality rating of resources
for all students and engaged students across control
and treatment conditions.
RQ3. What is the impact of the proposed interventions on the quality of the resources created by students?
All students
Engaged
• Quality rating order (median):
1. Conditions B and C (Mdn = 3.9)
2. Condition D (Mdn = 3.85)
3. Conditions A and E (Mdn = 3.8)
• Not statistically significant
• Quality rating order (median):
1. Conditions B, C and D (Mdn = 3.9)
2. Condition A and E (Mdn = 3.80)
• Statistically significant between conditions
A and C, with small effect (U = 25719, r =
.11, p < .01).
23. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
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Introduction Results Discussion Questions
Method
24. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 24
• Scaffolds increased task complexity
and time with no significant
improvements
• Similar results observed in previous
research [1]
Effect on process & performance
• Interventions were not perceived as effective
• Can be explained by Winne [2] four conditions
1. learners are aware that the scaffold is useful to
them,
2. learners know that the scaffold can be useful for the
task at hand,
3. learners have enough skills to use the scaffold and
4. learners are motivated to use it.
Learners’ perceptions
Discussion & Conclusion
[2] Philip H Winne. 2006. How software technologies can improve research on learning and bolster school reform. Educ. Psychol. 41, 1 (Mar 2006), 5–17.
[1] Jaclyn Broadbent, Ernesto Panadero, Jason M Lodge, and Paula de Barba. 2020. Technologies to enhance self-regulated learning in online and computer-mediated learning environments. In Handbook of research in educational communications and
technology. Springer, Cham, 37–52.
25. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 25
• Analytics-based environments that
enhance learning
• Evaluation of the environments
using LA
Contribution
• Training and feedback using LA
• Empirical research for evaluating
interventions
• Involving stockholders
Implications
Discussion & Conclusion
26. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing 26
Discussion & Conclusion
• Duration
• No ground truth
• Does not consider learning gain
• Data from only two course
• Longer duration
• Obtaining ground truth
• Pre- and post-tests
• Data from several courses (>10)
Limitations Future work
27. Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
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Introduction Results Discussion Questions
Method
28. 28
Thank you!
Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing
Hatim Lahza
h.lahza@uq.edu.au
A/prof. Hassan Khosravi
h.khosravi@uq.edu.au
A/prof. Gianluca Demartini
g.demartini@uq.edu.au
Prof. Dragan Gasevic
Dragan.Gasevic@monash.edu
Hi I’m Hatim Lahza, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. Today, I’m going to present our work that has been done collaboratively with my great supervisory team, Professor Hassan Khosravi and Professor Gianluca Demartini from the University of Queenslad, and Professor Dragan Gasevic from Monash University. Our paper title is “Effects of Technological Interventions for Self-regulation: A Control Experiment in Learnersourcing”.
I’m going to start with a brief introduction and abit of a background, then methods, then results, and then Discussion and conclusion.
As we all know, a part of instructors' responsibilities is supporting students in need. But, when class size increases, it's challenging for them to meet each individual student needs.
This issue is mitigated with modern computer-supported learning environments as they can scale instructional solutions or scaffolds in large classes. However, there is no clear guidance on how self-regulation strategies can be integrated with them
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Here I'm going to share the motivation of this study.
As we all know, a part of instructors' responsibilities is supporting students in need. But, when the class size increases, it's challenging for them to assist students.
Fortunately, computer-supported learning environments can scale instructional solutions very well in large classes. But, there is no clear guidance on how they can be integrated with self-regulation strategies
In our study we have two main objectives:
Designing an online educational environment interfaces based on self-regulated learning strategies
Conducting an in-the-field experiment to evaluate our design
====================================================================================================
We choose self-regulated learning as it’s an essential lifelong learning skill that can help students to take hold of their learning tasks and reduce their dependency on teachers.
As a background, there are many different models of self-regulated learning from different psychological and educational perspectives. But, in this study we choose to look at their commonalities. In Panadero’s work, we could see that most of the common SRL models are cyclic processes and have preparatory, performance and evaluation phases.
Moreover, a self-regulated learner should practice agency by choosing, adapting and developing strategies and instructions to reach their goals. On the other hand, a poor self-regulated learner can be supported by scaffolds within educational technologies. However, evidence of self-regulated learning effectiveness in online learning environments are still non-conclusive and insufficient to rigorously guide the practice.
In our study, we use a learnersourcing environment:
Which refers to the activity of engaging students in creating learning resources.
This type of activity can benefit learners in many areas such as:
Promoting active learning
Supporting evaluative judgment skill
Reducing Instructor load
And more
Past studies suggest that learner has the ability to create high-quality resources. However, not all contents created by students are high-quality. We assume that the creation interface might be part of the issue as they are usually designed for the instructor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, why self-regulation strategies and what do they consist of? Self-regulated learning is considered an essential competence and lifelong learning skill.
The most common SRL models are cyclic and have three common phases:
task analysis in which the plans and goals are set; followed by
Performance in which tactics and strategies are implemented with monitoring
And the third phase is “evaluation”, which involves reflection, self-assessment, regulation and adaptation
In addition, a self-regulated learner should practice agency by choosing, adapting and developing strategies and instructions to reach their goals. On the other hand, a poor self-regulated learner can be supported by scaffolds within educational technologies. However, evidence of SRL effectiveness in online learning environments are still non-conclusive and insufficient to rigorously guide the practice.
In our study, we use a learnersourcing environment:
Which refers to the activity of engaging students in creating learning resources.
This type of activity can benefit learners in many areas such as:
Promoting active learning
Supporting evaluative judgment skill
Reducing Instructor load
And more
Past studies suggest that learner has the ability to create high-quality resources. However, not all contents created by students are high-quality. We assume that the creation interface might be part of the issue as they are usually designed for the instructor.
Why self-regulated learning? We choose self-regulated learning as it’s an essential lifelong learning skill that can help students to take hold of their learning tasks and reduce their dependency on teachers.
There are many different models of self-regulated learning from different psychological and educational perspectives. But, in this study we choose to look at their commonalities. In the literature, we could see that most of the common SRL models are cyclic processes and have preparatory, performance and evaluation phases.
Moreover, a self-regulated learner should practice agency by choosing, adapting and developing strategies and instructions to reach their goals. On the other hand, a poor self-regulated learner can be supported by scaffolds within educational technologies. However, evidence of self-regulated learning effectiveness in online learning environments are still non-conclusive and insufficient to rigorously guide the practice.
In our study, we use a learnersourcing environment:
Which refers to the activity of engaging students in creating learning resources.
This type of activity can benefit learners in many areas such as:
Promoting active learning
Supporting evaluative judgment skill
Reducing Instructor load
And more
Past studies suggest that learner has the ability to create high-quality resources. However, not all contents created by students are high-quality. We assume that the creation interface might be part of the issue as they are usually designed for the instructor.
In our study we used RiPPLE which is an adaptive learning environments that enables learnersourcing of different types of learning resources such as MCQs and worked examples. It also supports learner models so that students can understand and monitor their performance in the platform.
The process graph here is a high level overview of the process showing the three main types of activities, creating learning resources, moderating learning resources and practicing resources tailored to students abilities.
And here is the original interface for creating a learning resource which is in this case a multiple choice question. So, the students first write the stem of the question, then choose the associated topic, then create the correct response and the distractors, and lastly write an explanation for the question.
To reach or objectives, we first developed interventions for SRL strategies
In our study, we considered three main interventions, namely
planning then creating
externally-facilitated monitoring
And, self-assessing after creating
Additionally, we considered a fourth intervention that combine all of the strategies
Then we created an interface corresponding to each of the interventions as I'm going to show in the next slides
In our study, the first self-reglation strategy is the planning then creating which includes six main elements. We hypothesis that the planner can benefit both students who have a clear idea of what to create and those looking for new ideas
Here in the figure, the first step is:
Inspiration source of the resource ides
The target concept or skill
The learning level according to Bloom’s taxonomy. The students were also provided with a short presentation that explains how to choose the appropriate level which we will see in the next slide
Level of difficulty of the item
Mistakes or misconception related to the question
Type of media to be used
It’s important to mention that here we focus only on multiple choice questions
And also these components are optional
This slide shows the presentation provided to students on learning levels. The presentation includes the definitions of the learning levels and the associated verbs. Also, exemplars and general tips were provided
The second intervention is the externally-facilitated monitoring that should support the SRL “performance” phase.
We aim to provide monitoring elements while creating a resource
These elements support:
Best practices in writing the body of the question
Best practices in writing plausible distractors
And best practices in writing explanation of the correct answer
We presented these elements as tick boxes
The self-assessing after creation is the third intervention
and it aims to support the SRL evaluation phase
Our interface consists of self-assessment and reflection.
The self-assessment was built according to the rubric with
a set of criteria used in the moderation activity.
In the reflection component, the students were provided with
an open-ended question to write their reflection on the resource they created.
We used the following research questions to guide our study
To reach our second objective, we conducted an in-the-field randomised control
experiment that considers a control group A and four other treatment groups:
planning then creating (B)
monitoring while creating (C)
self-assessing after creating (D)
All (E)
The study was conducted at the university of Queensland.
We used data from two courses, Neuroscience & Information systems.
The participants were 797 undergraduate students who provided their consent on the platform.
RiPPLE was used for assessment over multiple rounds and contributed 10% to the final grade. But engagement with the intervention was optional.
So, the creation task along with other tasks such as the moderation or practices were required to gain the 10%, but not the intervention.
The resources created by the students for both courses were about 2-3 per student.
We considered a student to be engaged if they at least completed all the components of an intervention.
So, an engaged student is the student how at least completed all the intervention components at one session
Table 1 provides an overview of the experimental groups. In total, the students created 1907 resources.
The students in each group created from 300 to 400 resources. The engaged students were more than 60% in both courses.
Here are the RQs again. In our analysis, we used the combined data.
First, we measured the impact of the interventions on the creation process and effort. To do so,
we modelled the creation processes using the trace data and First Order Markuv Model. We also
conducted a qualitative analysis using the time spent by students in min.
Second, we measured the impact on student perception. Students rated t
he effectiveness of the interfaces using a scale of 5 after each creation.
Also, we used 137 responses to an open-ended question provided by 103 students.
Third, we used descriptive and inferential statistics on the effectiveness rating, and we
used a general inductive approach and sentiment analysis on the written feedback.
We measured the impact on performance by using qualitative analysis on the resource quality rating provided by the system.
Here we present the result of RQ1 in which we investigate the impact of the interventions on the process and effort
The visualisation of the process consists of connected oval shapes representing the type of activity and arrows showing the direction of the connection.
The strength of the connection is indicated by the thickness of the arrows and the transition probability next to it.
Inside the oval shapes, we added the fractional time the students spent on the activities.
Key observations
In general the interventions changed the process in which the students create learning resources, but with additional complexity.
Condition B: The students used the planner and there was a strong interaction between the planning and creation components
However, the students sometimes skipped the planning component (28%).
This might mean many different things, such as the students knew what to create.
We can see that the panner required extra time to complete the creation task and this was statistically different than the control group.
Condition C:
Similar to the planner, the students used the monitoring components.
There was large probability of ending the process after writing the resource (40%). I expected this to be lower.
The students spent only 4% of the total time on the scaffolding. This is similar to previous findings [1].
Condition D: strong interactions between the self-assessment and creation (Cr –> Sa: 87% and Sa –> Cr: 32%).
Condition E: Combination of the processes observed in the other groups
In RQ2, we investigate the impact of the interventions on Student Perceptions
Table 2 summarises the results
And here, we order the conditions based on the average of the student rating
It seems that the students liked the control interface more than the treatment interfaces
Next, the qualitative analysis will reveal more information
Here we present the qualitative analysis results.
We identified three main themes, technology, pedagogy and generic
In table 3 we summarise the results with some examples of students’ responses
In summary,
Here we investigate the impact on the performance. It’s important to recall that the performance here is
measured by quality rating that the resource receive from the moderation process.
Figure three summarises the results of RQ3.
We can see that for both “all students” and “engaged students”, condition “B” and “C” had
the higher median followed by condition D. The control group and condition E had the least median.
The difference between condition C and A was statistically significant for the engaged students with small effect size.
Our results indicate that: Scaffolds increased task complexity and time with no significant improvements
Similar results observed in previous research [1]
Many factors can help explain why the SRL strategies might have a small or no impact on content creation.
The students could have different regulation levels
Some students could low prior knowledge
Technical difficulties that we found in the qualitative analysis
Also, our results indicate that the Interventions were not perceived as effective
Which means that the metacognitive prompts were not assisted by the learners positively:
This can be explained by Winne [2] four conditions
According to Winne [35], for learners to use a learning tool that introduces metacognitive scaffolds, four conditions need to be met: -
learners are aware that the scaffold is useful to them,
learners know that the scaffold can be useful for the task at hand,
learners have enough skills to use the scaffold and
learners are motivated to use it.
Our work contribute to the growing interest in creating analytics-based environments that
enhance learning and using learning analytics to evaluate such environments
We highlight the need for combining the newly introduced scaffolds with rationale for their value
along with training to facilitate student acceptance and adoption.
The training can be delivered with LA personalised feedbacks
We emphasize the importance of empirical research in measuring the effectiveness
of theory-based technological interventions and the involvement of stockholders in assessing interventions
We acknowledge some limitation of our work that we plan to overcome in our future work.
The duration was relatively short which may not have allowed the benefits of the interventions to be fully achieved.
We only used the rating provided by the system which might not be as accurate as instructors rating
We also did not consider the impact of the interventions on students learning
Finally, we did not use data from multiple courses