The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the level of background knowledge and the metacognition supporting tool(MST) on the learning activities and outcomes in web problem based learning environment from the theoretical perspectives o...
The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the level of background knowledge and the metacognition supporting tool(MST) on the learning activities and outcomes in web problem based learning environment from the theoretical perspectives of PBL(problem-based-learning) in the Web and metacognition.
The MST which is a component of web problem based learning environments was developed for the purpose of this study. The PBL activities were evaluated by learners' recognition, planning, efforts to investigate learning resources, cognitive strategy, monitoring of their own learning processes, and dynamic collaboration among students. The learning outcomes resulting from PBL activities were evaluated by learners' investigations into various learning resources and their outputs, the degree of collaboration among students, and the degree of content organization.
The subjects for this study were eighty students from the 4th grade in elementary school. They were randomly assigned to one of the two groups to test the effects of the selected treatment variables.
The major research findings of the study were as follows. First, there was statistically no significant difference among the levels of learners' background knowledge on the PBL activities. Second, providing MST treatment significant affected the PBL achievement(p〈.05). The scores of the learners who make use of the PBL program with MST were higher than those of the learners using the PBL program without MST. Third, the interaction effects of the level of background knowledge and providing MST for learners' PBL activities was not significant. Fourth, there was statistically no significant difference among the levels of learners' background knowledge on the PBL outcomes. Fifth, there was no significant difference between the PBL outcomes and providing MST for learners' PBL activities. Sixth, the interaction effects of the level of background knowledge and providing MST for learners' PBL activities had an influence on producing PBL outcomes(p〈.05). Additionally, the effectiveness of the lower level learners using PBL program with MST were slightly higher than those of the higher level learners using PBL program with MST.
The PBL outcomes supported by MST were higher than those without MST for both the learners who have a high level of background knowledge and the lower level of background knowledge(F=8.25, p〈.05). Also, there were interaction effects of the level of background knowledge and providing MST for learners' PBL activities in the PBL outcomes. These results suggest that there were positive effects on the learners who have the lower level of background knowledge by providing MST for their own learning activities, while slightly minor effects on the learners who have high level of background knowledge.
Results suggest that the level of learners' background knowledge, because learning tasks were characterized by ill-structured problems in Web-based problem learning and this sort of learning might be a somewhat newer experience for the selected students, could play a weak role in problem oriented learning activity. Providing MST for learners' PBL activities, however, was highly influential for learners who practice PBL in Web based learning environments. In addition, for PBL outcomes variables like problem solution reporting documents, the lower level learners' background knowledge was more effective than the higher level learners' by the MST treatment.
Because this research, however, was not research that verifies the differential effects of MST strategies on the PBL outcomes, further researches which support the effectiveness of different metacognitive strategies appropriate for different PBL programs in the web based learning environments should be followed to overcome the limitations of this research findings. In particular, further research on the effects of the learners' different metacognition and the ways of providing metacognitive strategies in the PBL activities and its outcomes should be conducted to overcome the limitations of this study.