Meta-Cognition, Motivation, and Affect

PSY504Spring term, 2011February 7, 2011Andy Montalvo

Planning

1. Disambiguation2. Theories3. Research

Important Terms

• Plan and Planning– Different levels are referred to.

• Study Plan• Problem level plan

– Are there different parts to this?• Strategy

– In education, it seems to be often spoken at a different level than most people do

– Underlining is spoken of as a strategy. This is a strategy?• Goals

– There are goals, subgoals– Goals are really its own subject, but we will touch on them here

Planning

• To plan• Can anyone suggest a definition for planning?• Any suggestions for how to make this

definition better?

Plan/Planning Dictionary Definitions

• Oxford: (a plan) an intention or decision about what one is going to do

• Cambridge: the act of deciding how to do something

• American Heritage: a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding, making, etc., developed in advance

• WordNet: an act of formulating a program for a definite course of action

Plan/Planning other definitions

• Winne, Hadwin: creation of sub-goals (implicit)

• Azevedo, Guthrie, Seibert: A plan involves coordinating the selection of operators. Its execution involves making behavior conditional on the state of the problem and a hierarchy of goals and sub-goals

Plan/Planning other definitions

• Muis (2007): – Planning includes selecting the types of learning

and meta-cognitive strategies an individual may use to carry out the task

– A plan is a course of action an individual decides to implement prior to solving a problem

Plan/Planning other definitions

• Schraw (2006): – Planning involves the selection of appropriate

strategies and the allocation of resources– Planning includes goal setting, activating relevant

background knowledge, and budgeting time

Strategy

• How is a strategy different?

Strategy - Definitions

• Dictionary– American Heritage: A plan of action resulting from

strategy or intended to accomplish a specific goal– Merriam Webster: • a : a careful plan or method : a clever stratagem • b : the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems

toward a goal

– MacMillan: a plan or method for achieving something, especially over a long period of time

Strategy

• Synonyms by American Heritage– plan, blueprint, design, project, scheme, strategy

These nouns denote a method or program in accordance with which something is to be done or accomplished: has no vacation plans; a blueprint for reorganizing the company; social conventions of human design; an urban-renewal project; a new scheme for conservation; a strategy for survival.

Strategy

• Any thoughts?

Attempts to Disambiguate

• From Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness– A plan is an arrangement, a pattern, a program, or

a scheme for a definite purpose. A plan is very concrete in nature and doesn’t allow for deviation.

– A strategy, on the other hand, is a blueprint, layout, design, or idea used to accomplish a specific goal. A strategy is very flexible and open for adaptation and change when needed.

Attempts to Disambiguate

• Answers.com– A plan is basically "what to do" while a strategy is

"how to do it“• Peggy Schoen (IMF) – how to downsize– Strategy :Doing the right thing– Plan: Doing things right

• Dignath (Schraw)– Planning involves the selection of appropriate

strategies and the allocation of resources

Goals

• How do goals fit into this?

Goals - Definitions

• Merriam Webster: the end toward which effort is directed

• WordNet: the state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behavior intended to achieve it

• American Heritage: The purpose toward which an endeavor is directed; an objective

Goals - Definitions

• Winne, Hadwin: A set of standards by which a task might be judged

• Azevedo, Guthrie, Seibert: Consist either of operations that are possible, postponed, or intended, or of states that are expected to be obtained. Goals can be identified because they have no reference to already existing states.

Questions? Comments?

How I will use the terms

• Goal – an objective, something you wish to achieve (not a wish), an end to which effort is directed

• Strategy – an approach used to achieve a goal that includes plans, plan monitoring (not the action, but the intent), and breaking goals into sub-goals

• Plan – list of procedures or tasks to perform to achieve a goal

Theories

• As far as I can tell there is only one theory. It’s the stake in the ground

• It’s not just for planning, so I’ve attempted to extract the planning portion.

COPES model

Winne, Hadwin• Conditions• Operations• Products• Evaluations• Standards

Theory: Models

• Winne, HadwinTask Definition

Goal setting and Planning

Enacting study strategies and Tactics

Meta cognitively adapting

Theory: Models

• Winne, Hadwin– More complicated than shown, but this is simplified to focus on

planning– For planning and sub-goals, it may be better to defined sub-

goals for students– (Morgan, 1985, cited)

• Students not good at setting sub--goals• But students with sub-goals faired better• 3 types of goals: proximal goals, 1 distal goal, 1 time goal

– (Schrunk, 1996, cited) Goals externally set are better if learning oriented rather outcome

• Notice that planning is seen as goal setting

Theory: Models

• Andy

Task

Goal

Task evaluation

Plan

StrategySub-goals

Evaluate goal in context

conversion

Enact

EvaluateAction

Evaluate Plan

Good

Bad

Bad, branch

Bad

Planning

Looking at Research

• Research that measures• Research on instruction• Research on computer tutoring• Meta-analysis• AI• Other research

Research: Measuring

• Azevedo, Guthrie, Seibert (2004)– Students studying circulatory system– Used think-alouds to record different self-

regulated learning– Setting “learning goals” did not help low-jumpers,

but seemed to help high-jumpers– High-jumpers were better at• Planning• Creating sub-goals• Not recycling goals

Research: Direct Instruction

• Azevedo, Cromley (2004)– Students (experimental group) were taught what self-

regulated learning was– Roger Azevedo actually sat with students and explained

self-regulation by describing it and showing diagrams– These students amazingly did better than the control

group in learning, as measured by a post-test, on the circulatory system.

– Think-alounds were used to measure meta-cog as before

Research: Meta-analysis

• Charlotte Dignath, Buttner [Langfeldt] (2008)– Primary school and secondary– Since these are meta-analyses, they look across papers

and therefore don’t address specific methods.– Student training of planning plus either monitoring or

evaluation strategies. Other combinations not as good.– Teaching the planning and strategies was not enough,

students needed feedback on strategy use (related to motivation)

– Researcher interventions were better than teacher interventions

Research: Tutoring

• Corbett (1996)– Used ACT-R for planning scaffolding in Lisp tutor– Uses knowledge tracing– Basically adds scaffolds for getting students to

create sub-goals– Showed significant learning gains.

Research: AI

• Mooney (1990)– How is planning learned? Use AI system called GENESIS– GENESIS is a natural language program that reads texts

and attempts to figure out people plans and intentions.– It extracts goals and plans (plan schemata) from text

and stores them– It can then use these to help it figure out other plans– It tests plans schemas to make sure they fit actions – Attempts to draw parallel to human reasoning

Somewhat connected research

• The following set of research was interesting and shed some light on planning, but seemed less important to our discussion

Research: Tutoring

• Rus, Lintean, Azevedo (2010)– Used MetaTutor to scaffold sub-goals in circulatory

system tutor– Could tell if goals too general or specific– I’m not sure if there were any learning gains

Research: Tutoring

• Manlove: Process coordinator in PC+– Mostly better results, but it seemed that using the tool

sometimes took time away from other activities like model building

• White, Federicksen: ThinkerTools– Anybody know about this?– Paper I had was 118 pages

• Jackson, et al (1996): ModelIt– Any one?

• William, et al (1996): ASK Jasper– Any one?

Research: Model-Tracing

• Koedinger, Anderson (1990)– Experts and novices create plans differently– Like in problem solving experts skip steps

Research: Hidden as something else

• Sandoval, Reiser - ExplanationConstructor– Part of Explanation driven inquiry– Questions need to be answered and answers are

to be explained.– Student creates hierarchy of questions that need

to be explained to get to back to the main question.

– Basically, this formulates a plan for how to answer the question

Research: Hidden as something else

• Bell, Davis– KIE (Knowledge Integration Environment– Use the pedagogical agent Mildred (a cow) to

provide “Thinking Ahead” prompts

Questions? Comments?

The End

Papers1. Azevedo, R., & Cromley, J. G. (2004). Does training on self-regulated learning facilitate

students' learning with hypermedia? Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(3), 523-5352. Azevedo, R. Cromley, J.G., Winters, F.I., Xu, L., & Iny, D. (2003, July). Is strategy instruction

effective in facilitating students' ability to regulate their learning with hypermedia? In U. Hoppe, F. Verdejo, & J. Kay (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence in Education: Shaping the future of learning through intelligent technologies (pp. 193-200). Amsterdam: IOS Press.

3. Azevedo, R., Guthrie, J.T., Siebert, D. (2004) The Role of Self-Regulated Learning in Fostering Students' Conceptual Understanding of Complex Systems with Hypermedia. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 30 (1&2), 87-111.

4. Corbett, Albert (2000)j Instructional Interventions in Computer-Based Tutoring: Differential Impact on Learning Time and Accuracy; In Proc. of CHI'2000, The Hague; 97--104

5. Dignath, Charlotte and Büttner, Gerhard (2008) . Components of fostering self-regulated learning among students. A meta-analysis on intervention studies at primary and secondary school level. Metacognition and Learning; 3 (3) 231-264

6. Dignath, Charlotte; Buettner, Gerhard; Langfeldt, Hans-Peter, How can primary school students learn self-regulated learning strategies most effectively?: A meta-analysis on self-regulation training programmes, Educational Research Review, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 101-12

Papers7. Koedinger, K. R. and Anderson, J. R. (1990), Abstract Planning and Perceptual Chunks:

Elements of Expertise in Geometry. Cognitive Science, 14: 511–5508. Manlove, Sarah; Lazonder, Ard; de Jong, Ton (2007); Software scaffolds to promote

regulation during scientific inquiry learning. Metacognition and Learning; 2(2) 141-1559. Mooney, Raymond J., Learning plan schemata from observation: Explanation-based

learning for plan recognition, Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 4, October-December 1990, Pages 483-509

10. Muis, Krista R. and Franco, Gina M. (2010) Epistemic profiles and metacognition: support for the consistency hypothesis. Metacognition and Learning; 5 (1) , 27-45

11. Rus, V., Lintean, M., & Azevedo, R., (2010). Computational Aspects of The Intelligent Tutoring System MetaTutor. Proceedings of the 23st International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference. Daytona Beach, FL.

12. Schraw, Gregory (2007) The use of computer-based environments for understanding and improving self-regulation. Metacognition Learning (2007) 2:169–176

13. Winne, P., Hadwin, P. (1998) Studying as Self-Regulated Learning. In Hacker, D.J., Dunlosky, J., Graesser, A.C. Metacognition in Educational Theory and Practice, 277-304.