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Scaffolding middle school students’ content knowledge and ill-structured problem solving in a problem-based hypermedia learning environment

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Abstract

This study investigated the effects of domain-general and domain-specific scaffolds with different levels of support, continuous and faded, on learning of scientific content and problem-solving. Students’ scores on a multiple-choice pretest, posttest, and four recommendation forms were analyzed. Students’ content knowledge in all conditions significantly increased from pretest to posttest. However, the continuous domain-specific condition outperformed the other conditions on the posttest. Although domain-general scaffolds were not as effective as domain-specific scaffolds on learning content and problem representation, they helped students develop solutions, make justifications, and monitor learning. Unlike domain-specific scaffolds, domain-general scaffolds helped students transfer problem-solving skills when they were faded. Several suggestions are discussed for making improvements in the design of scaffolds to facilitate ill-structured problem solving.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Middle East Technical University, 06531, Ankara, Turkey

    Saniye Tugba Bulu

  2. Educational Technology Program, Department of Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-4225, USA

    Susan Pedersen

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  1. Saniye Tugba Bulu
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  2. Susan Pedersen
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Correspondence to Saniye Tugba Bulu.

Appendices

Appendices

Appendix 1 Questions, examples, and sentence starters for the domain-general and the domain-specific conditions
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Appendix 2 Scoring problem-solving processes in students’ recommendation forms
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Bulu, S.T., Pedersen, S. Scaffolding middle school students’ content knowledge and ill-structured problem solving in a problem-based hypermedia learning environment. Education Tech Research Dev 58, 507–529 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-010-9150-9

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