A Cognitive Support System to Scaffold Students’ Problem-based Learning in a Web-based Learning Environment

Main Article Content

Xun Ge
Lourdes G. Planas
Nelson Er

Abstract

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effects of question prompts and peer review on scaffolding students’ problem-based learning in a web-based cognitive support system. Ninety-six pharmacy students were randomly assigned to a treatment or control condition. The students in both conditions were asked to generate solutions to a real-world problem on clinical communication in a web-based learning environment. The results indicated that students who received question prompts significantly outperformed those who did not in each of the five problem-solving steps in both initial and revised reports. The results also showed that students in both conditions significantly improved their problem solving scores given a chance to revise their initial problem-solving reports. In addition, the study revealed a positive effect of the expert modeling mechanism in supporting students’ reasoning and problem solving processes. Implications are discussed for designing web-based scaffolds to support students’ problem-solving processes.

Article Details

Section
Research Articles