Dynamic Scaffolding to Improve Learning and Transfer of Hidden Skills

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Failure to learn hidden skills is a persistent obstacle to students in science, math, and engineering domains. Hidden skills, which include problem categorization, feature detection, and planning, are critical to solving problems in a domain but do not have any immediate, external product for students to see. Unfortunately, it is unclear how best to identify and teach these difficult-to-learn skills. Instructional scaffolding is a popular and effective technique for providing targeted support and guidance while students learn to solve problems in a new domain. Scaffolding has great potential for improving hidden-skill learning. However, the reasons it works and how best to implement it are largely unknown.The proposed research will explain the effectiveness of instructional scaffolding in terms of hidden skill learning. Several hypotheses about the relationship between scaffolding and hidden skills will be tested, and new scaffolding designs will be evaluated. This will lead to a systematic approach to teaching hidden skills that improves students' learning and transfer. The four specific aims of this project are:(1) Develop a systematic, efficient method for identifying hidden skills. While methods currently exist for analyzing domain-specific knowledge, these methods are not robust for identifying hidden skills, and they tend to be difficult and slow. This project will develop and test an automated method that combines logistic regression models and heuristic search algorithms to infer where hidden skills lie.(2) Develop a theoretical explanation for why scaffolding works. Although instructional scaffolds often lead to better learning, there has been little theoretical progress in explaining when and how scaffolding works. A sequence of experiments will be conducted to test three hypotheses that offer increasingly concrete levels of explanation for how scaffolding benefits learning and transfer. (3) Develop practical guidelines for the design of effective instructional scaffolding. Three critical questions for scaffolding design will be examined: What level of scaffolding support is sufficient to achieve its main benefit? When and how should scaffolding support be built and faded? And how can human instructors (i.e., TA's) best complement a computerized scaffolded learning environment? (4) Develop novel applications of our results on scaffolding hidden skills. There are at least two novel applications of this work, beyond the scope of learning theory and instructional design. First, the scaffolding designs from Specific Aim 3 will be used to develop new on-line assessments of students' understanding. Second, the results from Specific Aim 1 will be used to develop tools that train instructors to "see" the hidden skills in complex problems and thus better anticipate students' learning difficulties.