Modelling ability is one of the essential elements of the latest educational reforms, and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is a curriculum-based assessment which allows educational systems worldwide to inspect the curricular influences. The aims of this study were to examine the role of modelling ability in the…

In laboratory study environments, dialogue-videos, or videos of a tutor and a tutee solving problems together, have been shown to more effectively improve student learning than monologue-videos, or videos of tutors solving problems alone. Yet, few studies have replicated these findings in the context of authentic university classrooms. Here, we…

In this paper, we applied a number of clustering algorithms on pretest data collected from 264 high-school students. Students took the pre-test at the beginning of a 5-week experiment in which they interacted with an intelligent tutoring system. The primary goal of this work is to identify clusters of students exhibiting similar knowledge…

Both accurate monitoring and adequate control are crucial for effective self-regulation when learning from problem-solving tasks. Prior research has shown that self-regulated learning is especially harmful for low prior knowledge students, given their difficulties with accurate monitoring and control decisions. Although many studies have indicated…

Understanding how situational features of assessment tasks impact reasoning is important for many educational pursuits, notably the selection of curricular examples to illustrate phenomena, the design of formative and summative assessment items, and determination of whether instruction has fostered the development of abstract schemas divorced from…

Process diagrams are important tools in biology for explaining processes such as protein synthesis, compound cycles and the like. The aim of the present study was to measure the ability to solve process-diagram problems in biology and its relationship with prior knowledge, spatial ability and working memory. For this purpose, we developed a test…

Researchers have long recognized the potential benefits of open-ended computer- based learning environments (OELEs) to help students develop self-regulated learning (SRL) behaviours. However, measuring self-regulation in these environments is a difficult task. In this paper, we present our work in developing and evaluating "coherence…

Many college students struggle with first-semester general chemistry. Prior studies have shown that a student's prior knowledge of chemistry, a cognitive factor, does not account for the total variance when measured by examination scores. This study explored the role of self-regulated learning (SRL) to identify the degree of success or failure of…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of a ubiquitous problem-based learning system (UPBLS) on students' question-raising performance in field inquiry activities. An experiment was conducted on an elementary school natural science course. A total of 43 sixth and fifth grade elementary students divided into experienced and…