The Effect of Highly Scaffolded Versus General Instruction on Students’ Exploratory Behavior and Arousal

Abstract

Technology is changing the way students interact with knowledge, and openended activities are one of the main types of tasks that students engage with in technologyrich environments. However, the amount of guidance needed to promote learning in these environments remains unknown. We explore this issue by focusing on the effects of stepby-step versus generic instructions on student's exploratory behavior and arousal levels. In this experiment, students completed three computer-based activities within a physics simulation software: building a tower, building a bridge and a free task. We did not find any effect of our experimental manipulation on students' task performance. We found, however, that detailed instruction induced higher level of activation followed by a relaxation phase and a recovery of the activation level in the last segment of the task (U-shaped curve). On the other hand, generic instructions seemed to lead students into a continuous relaxation pattern along the task (decreasing slope). Moreover, low and high-aroused students appear to be affected by the instructions differently, with high-aroused students at baseline showing less cognitive flexibility. Finally, we observed carryover effects, where types of instruction kept influencing students' levels of activation in a following openended task. We discuss implications of those results for designing learning activities in constructionist, technology-rich environments.

Multimodal data capabilities for learning: What can multimodal data tell us about learning?

“…Previous works that have reviewed the state of the field are concerned with individual modes (Blikstein, 2013 ;Blikstein & Worsley, 2016 ), or provide a conceptual framework using handpicked studies (Di Mitri, Schneider, Specht, & Drachsler, 2018 ), or analyze architectures (and are thus nonempirical works; Shankar, Prieto, Rodríguez-Triana, & Ruiz-Calleja, 2018 ) and do not engage in a systematic collection of empirical evidence (Blikstein & Worsley, 2016 ;Worsley, 2018 ). Apart from these review studies, there have been several MMLA and CrossMMLA workshops that have discussed the challenges and opportunities of MMLA.…”

“…Second, for informal situations in collaborative learning, audio, system logs, gesture and motion data were preferred (Spikol et al ., 2016(Spikol et al ., , 2018. Third, in the case of formal instruction to individuals, audio, system logs, gesture and video data were used (Blikstein, 2013 ;Mock et al ., 2016 ). Finally, for informal and individual cases, audio, gestures and log data were utilized by most contributions (Andrade et al ., 2017 ;Ochoa et al ., 2018 ).…”

The role of scaffolding in the instructional design of online, self-directed, inquiry-based learning environments: student engagement and learning approaches

“…Exploration is characterized by experimenting with the affordances of the environment in a playful and flexible way (March, 1991). The nature of this exploration is akin to a discovery (or inquiry) learning approach and supports the constructivist view of learning (Blikstein et al, 2016).…”

“…The benefits of guidance in constructivist learning have been clearly demonstrated in earlier research (Lazonder, 2014;van Joolingen et al, 2005). Especially strong instructional guidance is considered to be a key component for effective learning in constructivist learning contexts (Blikstein et al, 2016). However, several studies confirm that open-ended or minimally guided learning potentially increases the success rate at the later stage of the activity.…”

“…For example, Kapur (2008) suggests that when no guidance is provided to students, it can lead to a productive end in the longer term, though initially, it appears to lead to failure. The built-in affordances of the powerful technological tools potentially help students in this process of undertaking a productive exploration (Blikstein et al, 2016). Exploration is characterized by experimenting with the affordances of the environment in a playful and flexible way (March, 1991).…”