https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15516709cog1302_1

Self‐Explanations: How Students Study and Use Examples in Learning to Solve Problems

This paper review the 10-year history of tutor development based on the ACT theory (Anderson, 1983,1993). We developed production system models in ACT ofhow students solved problems in LISP, geometry, and algebra. Computer tutors were developed around these cognitive models. Construction ofthese tutors was guided by a set of eight principles loosely based on the ACT theory. Early evaluations of these tutors usually but not always showed significant achievement gains. Best-case evaluations showed that students could achieve at least the same level of proficiency as conventional instruction in one third the time. Empirical studies showed that students were learning skills in production-rule units and that the best tutorial interaction style was one in which the tutor provides immediate feedback, consisting of short and directed error messages. The tutors appear to work better if they present themselves to students as nonhuman tools to assist learning rather than as emulations of human tutors. Students working with these tutors display transfer to other environments to the degree that they can map the tutor environment into the test environment. These experiences have coalesced into a new system for developing and deploying tutors. This system involves first selecting a problem-solving interface, then constructing a curriculum under the guidance of a domain expert, then designing a cognitive model for solving problems in that environment, then building instruction around the productions in that model, and finally deploying the tutor in the classroom. New tutors are being built in this system to achieve the NCTM standards for high school mathematics in an urban setting. (http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA312246)

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Cognitive Tutors: Lessons Learned

Why Investigate Metacognition?, T.0. Nelson and L. Narens Frustrated Feelings of Imminent Recall - On the Tip of the Tongue, S.M. Smith A New Look at Feeling of Knowing: Its Metacognitive Role in Regulating Question Answering, A.C. Miner and L.M. Reder Subthreshold Priming and Memory Monitoring, L. Narens, K.A. Jameson and V. A. Lee Methodological Problems and Pitfalls in the Study of Human Metacognition, B.L. Schwartz and J. Metcalfe Memory's Knowledge of its Own Knowledge - The Accessibility Account of the Feeling of Knowing, A. Koriat A Computational Modelling Approach to Novelty Monitoring, Metacognition, and Frontal Lobe Dysfunction, J. Metcalfe Viewing Eyewitness Research from a Metacognitive Perspective, K. Weingardt, R.J. Leonesio and E.F. Loftus Memory and Metamemory Considerations in the Training of Human Beings, R.A. Bjork The Role of Metacognition in Problem-Solving, J.E. Davidson, R. Deuser and R.J. Sternberg Metacognitive Development in Adulthood and Old Age, C. Hertzog and R.A. Dixon The Neuropsychology of Metacognition, A.P. Shimamura.

Metacognition : knowing about knowing

This article describes learning with media as a complementary process within which representations are constructed and procedures performed, sometimes by the learner and sometimes by the medium It reviews research on learning with books, television, computers, and multimedia environments These media are distinguished by cognitively relevant characteristics of their technologies, symbol systems, and processing capabilities Studies are examined that illustrate how these characteristics, and the instructional designs that employ them, interact with learner and task characteristics to influence the structure of mental representations and cognitive processes Of specific interest is the effect of media characteristics on the structure, formation, and modification of mental models Implications for research and practice are discussed

Learning with Media

Research from numerous corners of psychological inquiry suggests that self-assessments of skill and character are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways. We review empirical findings on the imperfect nature of self-assessment and discuss implications for three real-world domains: health, education, and the workplace. In general, people's self-views hold only a tenuous to modest relationship with their actual behavior and performance. The correlation between self-ratings of skill and actual performance in many domains is moderate to meager-indeed, at times, other people's predictions of a person's outcomes prove more accurate than that person's self-predictions. In addition, people overrate themselves. On average, people say that they are "above average" in skill (a conclusion that defies statistical possibility), overestimate the likelihood that they will engage in desirable behaviors and achieve favorable outcomes, furnish overly optimistic estimates of when they will complete future projects, and reach judgments with too much confidence. Several psychological processes conspire to produce flawed self-assessments. Research focusing on health echoes these findings. People are unrealistically optimistic about their own health risks compared with those of other people. They also overestimate how distinctive their opinions and preferences (e.g., discomfort with alcohol) are among their peers-a misperception that can have a deleterious impact on their health. Unable to anticipate how they would respond to emotion-laden situations, they mispredict the preferences of patients when asked to step in and make treatment decisions for them. Guided by mistaken but seemingly plausible theories of health and disease, people misdiagnose themselves-a phenomenon that can have severe consequences for their health and longevity. Similarly, research in education finds that students' assessments of their performance tend to agree only moderately with those of their teachers and mentors. Students seem largely unable to assess how well or poorly they have comprehended material they have just read. They also tend to be overconfident in newly learned skills, at times because the common educational practice of massed training appears to promote rapid acquisition of skill-as well as self-confidence-but not necessarily the retention of skill. Several interventions, however, can be introduced to prompt students to evaluate their skill and learning more accurately. In the workplace, flawed self-assessments arise all the way up the corporate ladder. Employees tend to overestimate their skill, making it difficult to give meaningful feedback. CEOs also display overconfidence in their judgments, particularly when stepping into new markets or novel projects-for example, proposing acquisitions that hurt, rather then help, the price of their company's stock. We discuss several interventions aimed at circumventing the consequences of such flawed assessments; these include training people to routinely make cognitive repairs correcting for biased self-assessments and requiring people to justify their decisions in front of their peers. The act of self-assessment is an intrinsically difficult task, and we enumerate several obstacles that prevent people from reaching truthful self-impressions. We also propose that researchers and practitioners should recognize self-assessment as a coherent and unified area of study spanning many subdisciplines of psychology and beyond. Finally, we suggest that policymakers and other people who makes real-world assessments should be wary of self-assessments of skill, expertise, and knowledge, and should consider ways of repairing self-assessments that may be flawed.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1529-1006.2004.00018.x

Flawed Self-Assessment Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace

Teachers, administrators, testing agencies, and researchers all need a valid, reliable method of assessing writing ability. Each group has turned to holistic ratings of writing samples as a reliable qualitative procedure for responding to the essential features of writing. Yet the validity of holistic ratings has never been convincingly demonstrated. This paper analyzes the implicit requirements for achieving reliable re- sults from holistic ratings and argues that these conditions bring the validity of the ratings into doubt. The research available suggests that even in carefully supervised rating sessions, holistic ratings may be un- duly influenced by superficial features of the writing samples. Those who use holistic ratings to evaluate writing ability need to give more serious attention to the validity of the scores that result.

The Validity of Using Holistic Scoring to Evaluate Writing: A Critical Overview.

How do comments on student writing from peers compare to those from subject-matter experts? This study examined the types of comments that reviewers produce as well as their perceived helpfulness. Comments on classmates’ papers were collected from two undergraduate and one graduate-level psychology course. The undergraduate papers in one of the courses were also commented on by an independent psychology instructor experienced in providing feedback to students on similar writing tasks. The comments produced by students at both levels were shorter than the instructor’s. The instructor’s comments were predominantly directive and rarely summative. The undergraduate peers’ comments were more mixed in type; directive and praise comments were the most frequent. Consistently, undergraduate peers found directive and praise comments helpful. The helpfulness of the directive comments was also endorsed by a writing expert.

Commenting on Writing Typology and Perceived Helpfulness of Comments from Novice Peer Reviewers and Subject Matter Experts

In these studies, we examined the role of elaborations for subjects learning a procedural skill (viz., using a personal computer) from an instructional text. In Experiment 1, we compared two sources of elaborations: those provided by the author and those generated by learners while reading. In the latter condition, subjects were given advance information about the tasks they were to perform so that they would generate more specific task-related elaborations while reading. Each source of elaborations facilitated skill performance. This result contrasts with results of the past experiments testing declarative knowledge in which author-provided elaborations were found to hurt performance. In Experiment 2, the author-provided elaborations were classified into those illustrating the syntax of the operating system commands and those explaining basic concepts and their applicability. Syntax elaborations produced significant facilitation for experienced and novice computer users. Concept elaborations produced no reliable improvement.

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The role of elaborations in learning a skill from an instructional text.

Empiricism Is not a Four-Letter Word.

This study investigated the relative benefits for acquiring computer skills of (a) learner-initiated versus experimenter-supplied goals and (b) active practice at selecting and applying procedures versus directed execution of procedures. Subjects with varied computer experience but no knowledge of electronic spreadsheets were randomly assigned to an interactive instruction or an exploration-learning condition. Both groups read identical descriptions of 12 spreadsheet commands. The exploration-learning group experimented with commands at will, setting goals, and selecting and applying procedures. The interactive instruction group did not set their own goals but, instead, worked three training problems per command. The training problems for six commands were presented without solutions; subjects solved them by actively selecting and applying procedures and afterwards received feedback. For the remaining six commands, the training problems were tutorials with explicit solutions that subjects typed in verbati...

Davida Charney

Papers

The Validity of Using Holistic Scoring to Evaluate Writing: A Critical Overview.

Commenting on Writing Typology and Perceived Helpfulness of Comments from Novice Peer Reviewers and Subject Matter Experts

The role of elaborations in learning a skill from an instructional text.

Empiricism Is not a Four-Letter Word.

Goal Setting and Procedure Selection in Acquiring Computer Skills: A Comparison of Tutorials, Problem Solving, and Learner Exploration