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- Creators: Department of Psychology
Students in academic environments receive near-constant feedback about both their own abilities as well as the performance of their peers which could significantly alter their cognitive and learning outcomes. This research investigates whether this social feedback concerning peer ability would improve students’ cognitive performance as measured by a visual working memory (VWM) task. Specifically, the present study provides either positive or negative feedback by means of peers’ performance to test for changes in the quality (memory precision) and the memorability (memory failure rate) of visual working memory representations. The effect of feedback on individual confidence was also examined, as feedback might impact subjective confidence instead of object task performance. Memory precision, participant guess rate, and confidence were compared across both halves of the experiment to determine potential time differences. Participants (N=105) were each administered a 300-trial Delayed Estimation Task to assess visual working memory ability. Participants were asked to rate their confidence in their task response after each trial and were all informed of their own response accuracy after every block of 30 trials. Along with personal feedback after each block, individuals were randomly assigned to view feedback ranking their performance as more or less accurate than other students. Results indicate a nonsignificant effect of peer feedback type on individual memory precision, guess rate, and confidence, which ran contrary to experimental hypotheses. These trends could have occurred due to the presence of participant-based moderating factors that could impact how certain individuals respond to feedback. Additionally, significant increases in both the precision of participants’ memory representations and the rate at which they guessed on the Delayed Estimation Task were observed across time. Together, these findings highlight the need for further research on the nuanced effects of social feedback on neural processing in order to improve student cognition over time.
This thesis work strives to solve the fundamental research question: How to leverage computer technologies to intelligently support concept mapping to promote meaningful learning? To approach this research question, I first present an intelligent concept mapping system, MindDot, that supports concept mapping via innovative integration of two features, hyperlink navigation, and expert template. The system reduces the effort of creating and modifying concept maps while encouraging beneficial activities such as comparing related concepts and establishing relationships among them. I then present the comparative strategy metric that modes student learning by evaluating behavioral patterns and learning strategies. Lastly, I develop an adaptive feedback system that provides immediate diagnostic feedback in response to both the key learning behaviors during concept mapping and the correctness and completeness of the created maps.
Empirical evaluations indicated that the integrated navigational and template support in MindDot fostered effective learning behaviors and facilitating learning achievements. The comparative strategy model was shown to be highly representative of learning characteristics such as motivation, engagement, misconceptions, and predicted learning results. The feedback tutor also demonstrated positive impacts on supporting learning and assisting the development of effective learning strategies that prepare learners for future learning. This dissertation contributes to the field of supporting concept mapping with designs of technological affordances, a process-based student model, an adaptive feedback tutor, empirical evaluations of these proposed innovations, and implications for future support in concept mapping.