E-Goals: Exploring a goal-oriented approach to learner modelling and metacognitive software scaffolding.

孩子们在处理学习任务的方式上有很大的不同。他们的方法受到他们对学习的意义，他们对成功和失败的态度以及他们在学习活动中的感受的影响。有些孩子相信他们的能力可以通过努力和坚持来提高：这些孩子被认为有掌握目标。掌握导向型的孩子把错误看作是有用的信息，告诉他们还有什么需要学习，需要付出多少努力才能达到更高的理解水平。另一些孩子认为能力是一种固定的属性，无论付出多少努力都无法改变：这些孩子有表现目标。表现导向的孩子关心别人如何看待他们的能力，他们试图在同龄人和老师面前显得聪明。从表现的角度来看，错误被视为能力低下的表现，因此这些孩子往往会逃避挑战。我们之前的研究发现，掌握型和表现型儿童在处理挑战性问题的方式上存在一些重要差异，特别是在小群体合作时，他们如何寻求帮助。表现型儿童倾向于要求解决问题，而不是使用有用的提示或线索，他们经常需要保证他们“做得对”。脚手架的概念被引入来描述教师可以给学习者的支持，以帮助弥合他们可能实现的目标和他们目前能够自己完成的目标之间的差距。脚手架技术已被用于教育软件设计;无论脚手架是一个人还是一项技术，成功搭建脚手架的要求都是相同的。搭建者需要了解学习者和主题，以便他们能够在适当的时候为特定的学习者提供或撤回帮助。在苏塞克斯，我们开发了一款名为Ecolab II的软件，它利用搭建者的这些动态特征来帮助儿童学习食物链和食物网。这个软件对孩子们应用于任务的策略也很敏感。例如，它监测儿童选择的困难程度以及他们寻求帮助的方式。然后，该软件提请儿童注意他们的学习策略，并提供有关如何改进这些策略的建议。我们认为，目标导向将对儿童如何回应和使用这类援助产生至关重要的影响。例如，如果软件检测到孩子要求太多的帮助，而没有任何独立解决问题的尝试，软件将提供一个提示，如“为什么不要求艺康少帮助？'.然而，如果这个孩子是被绩效目标所激励的，那么在感到有信心独立完成任务之前，他可能需要额外的关于自己能力的保证。如果不考虑孩子的目标取向，所提供的帮助可能不会帮助孩子提高她的学习策略。在当前的项目中，我们有机会使用艺康II，以调查目标取向和软件支架之间的关系，使软件能够区分不同的目标取向的学习者。评估支架的可行性，可以适应儿童的目标取向有可能影响和改善未来的教育软件的设计，以及更普遍的目标导向的教学法的发展。

Children differ a great deal in the way they approach learning tasks. Their approaches are influenced by the meaning they give to learning, their attitudes to success and failure and how they feel during learning activities. Some children believe that their ability can be increased through hard work and persistence: these children are said to have mastery goals. Mastery-oriented children view mistakes as useful pieces information about what still needs to be learnt and how much effort is needed to reach a higher level of understanding. Other children believe that ability is a fixed property which no amount of effort can change: these children have performance goals. Performance-oriented children are concerned with how other people view their ability and they try to look clever in front of peers and teachers. From a performance perspective mistakes are seen as indicating low ability and so these children tend to avoid challenges. Our previous research found several important differences between mastery- and performance-oriented children in how they tackled challenging problems and particularly in how they asked for help when they worked collaboratively in small peer groups. Performance children tended to ask for the solution to a problem rather than use helpful hints or clues and they often needed reassurance that they were 'doing it right'. The concept of scaffolding was introduced to describe the sort of support that teachers can give learners to help bridge the gap between what they could potentially achieve and what they are currently able to do by themselves. Scaffolding techniques have been used in educational software design; the requirements for successful scaffolding remain the same whether the scaffolder is a person or a piece of technology. The scaffolder needs knowledge about the learner and the topic so that they can provide or withdraw help at the right time for that particular learner.At Sussex we have developed a piece of software called Ecolab II which uses these dynamic features of scaffolding to help children learn about food chains and food webs. This software is also sensitive to the strategies children apply to the task. For example, it monitors the level of difficulty children choose and the manner in which they seek help. The software then draws children's attention to their learning strategies and provides suggestions about how these might be improved. We believe that goal orientation will be a crucial influence on how children respond to and use this sort of assistance. For example, if the software detects that the child is asking for too much help without any attempt at independent problem-solving, the software would provide a prompt such as 'Why not ask Ecolab for less help?'. However, if this child is motivated by performance goals she may need extra reassurance about her ability before feeling confident to undertake the task independently. Without taking account of her goal orientation the assistance provided may not help the child improve her learning strategies.In the current project we have the opportunity to use Ecolab II in order to investigate the relationship between goal orientation and software scaffolding by enabling the software to differentiate between learners with different goal orientations. Evaluating the feasibility of scaffolding which can adapt to children's goal orientation has the potential to influence and improve the design of future educational software as well as the development of a goal-oriented pedagogy more generally.