This paper describes a study of teacher sca olding to support re ection and self-regulated learning (SRL) with an open learner model (OLM) in a geography based task on a touch screen. The study was carried out in 6 one-on-one sessions with students between the ages of 10 and 11. We present examples of teachers sca olding students' SRL behaviours using the OLM, demonstrating how an OLM can be used to prompt the learner to monitor their developing skills, set goals, and use appropriate tools.
Self regulated learning (SRL) is the meta-cognitive process where a student uses
self-assessment, goal setting, and the selecting and deploying of strategies to
acquire academic skills; the use of SRL strategies are signi cantly correlated with
measures of academic performance [
Our goal is to ultimately develop a robotic tutor that can sca old SRL via an OLM. To this end, we present a user centred design (UCD) study to elicit how teachers personalise feedback using an OLM to sca old re ection and SRL.
We have developed a map based learning scenario that enables the learner to exhibit SRL skills and processes i.e. self-monitoring, goal setting, and help seeking. The learner has a choice of activities of varying di culty that allow them to practice map reading skills for distance, direction, and map symbols. The learner also has access to tools which can provide help with the activity.
This study involves 3 teachers and 6 students, with each teacher assisting 2
students individually through the activity, resulting in 6 sessions in total. The
students are of mixed sex and ability. Prior to the session the teachers were given
an introduction to the task and the OLM. The teachers were asked to provide
assistance using the OLM where possible but to also focus on helping the student
acquire SRL skills and to avoid giving direct answers. The students were asked
to use the learning activity to practice and develop their map reading skills.
They were informed that they were in charge of their own learning and could
choose the order of the activities and how long they wanted to do any activity
for. This is similar to the adaptive content and process sca olding (ACPS) [
We build a learner model of the student's map reading competencies using
constraint based modelling. This is an approach whereby competency values
are calculated by checking the learner's actions against a set of relevant
constraints [
The OLM shows skill meters for each competency and is visible at all times in the top left of the screen. Changes to the skill meters are made visible with animation and there are indicators to show the previous values. The learner can Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length inspect a history of the most recent 10 pieces of evidence for each individual competency by clicking on the corresponding skill meter. For example, if the learner expands the skill meter for distance then they will see evidence broken into north, east, south, west; e.g. they may see that they have met the north and south constraints correctly but not the west and the east constraints. This enables the user of the OLM to see exactly in which aspect of the competency their strengths and weaknesses lie. 3
Our initial analysis concerned whether the teachers used the OLM to sca old
SRL process. Video and task logs were reviewed and coded by a single coder.
The coding scheme is based on Zimmerman's SRL phase and sub-process [
Self-re ection phase. We see that the teachers use the OLM to prompt the learners to re ect in a number of ways, including prompting the learner to selfevaluate and attribute causes for the changes in the model of their developing skills: \What is that showing us then?" and \It's good because you got everything right, what do you think would happen if you got something wrong?". We also see that the teachers show satisfaction as the competencies increase: \Oh well done! It has shot right back up again now!".
Forethought phase. The teachers then build upon the learner's awareness of their developing skills to help set goals and strategies. When the OLM is showing that the student has a high level of competency the teachers use the OLM to suggest moving on to a new activity: \I think you are pretty good on that, do you? So what about the inter-cardinal directions?" and \look at that! Now, do you think that was a bit easy for you? Do you want to try out some of the others?". If the student has not mastered a skill the teacher will suggest continuing the activity until they have: \This is really good, but this is wrong (referring to one element of the OLM), let's continue it so that we can get 100%".
Performance phase. The teacher also used the OLM as a basis for task strategies. If the learner is being overly cautious and double checking each answer with a tool the teacher will encourage them to be more con dent and e cient: \Oh that's it, you are on a roll now (indicating OLM increase), you might not need to use the tool any more, you might have worked it out, what do you think?". When there is an issue with the learner's understanding, the OLM was used to highlight this: \Oh what happened to the meter, did you get that one right? I think I went west. Yeah, you can see here that the last attempt at east was wrong", the learner then proceeds to use the compass tool. Another example: \Why has it gone dark? That's interesting, what do you think that tells you there? That I got it wrong", the learner then proceeds to use the map key to identify the correct symbol.
Previous studies have suggested that prompts used to highlight errors to
encourage self-re ection and reasoning can be e ective in leading the learner to
self-correct those errors [
We see this study as the rst step in investigating if sca olding students' SRL behaviours using the OLM can be used to produce an environment in which students would experience greater learning gains through developing their SRL processes. From this study we are able to identify how teachers use our OLM to demonstrate re ection and SRL learning techniques. The teachers do this by drawing attention to the learner's developing competencies using the OLM, then encouraging re ection on why the competencies are changing and using this as a basis to suggest appropriate tools, goals, and strategies for the learner. We aim to use these ndings as a basis for developing robot interactions.
The strength of this study lies in the fact that we have seen the OLM being used by experienced teachers and students in a natural school setting. However, the study is limited due to the small number of participants and short duration.