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。他们对学习的意义、对成功和失败的态度以及在学习活动中的感受都影响着他们的学习方法。有些孩子相信他们的能力可以通过努力和坚持来提高：这些孩子被称为有精通目标。以掌握为导向的孩子把错误视为有用的信息，告诉他们还需要学习什么，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，再多的努力也无法改变：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，他们试图在同学和老师面前看起来很聪明。从表现的角度来看，错误被认为是低能力的表现，所以这些孩子倾向于逃避挑战。我们之前的研究发现，精通型和表现型的孩子在处理挑战性问题的方式上有几个重要的区别，尤其是在他们在小团体合作时寻求帮助的方式上。表现型儿童倾向于寻求问题的解决方案，而不是使用有用的提示或线索，他们经常需要确信自己“做得对”。引入脚手架的概念是为了描述教师可以为学习者提供的那种支持，以帮助他们弥合他们可能实现的目标和他们目前能够自己完成的任务之间的差距。脚手架技术在教育软件设计中得到了广泛应用；无论搭建者是人还是一项技术，成功搭建的要求都是相同的。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，它利用脚手架的这些动态特征来帮助孩子们了解食物链和食物网。这个软件对孩子们在任务中使用的策略也很敏感。例如，它监控孩子们选择的困难程度以及他们寻求帮助的方式。然后，该软件将孩子们的注意力吸引到他们的学习策略上，并就如何改进这些策略提供建议。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在没有尝试独立解决问题的情况下要求过多的帮助，软件就会提示“为什么不向艺康寻求更少的帮助？”然而，如果这个孩子的动机是表现目标，那么在自信地独立完成任务之前，她可能需要对自己的能力进行额外的保证。如果不考虑孩子的目标取向，所提供的帮助可能无助于孩子提高学习策略。在当前的项目中，我们有机会使用Ecolab II，通过使软件能够区分具有不同目标取向的学习者，来研究目标取向和软件脚手架之间的关系。评估适应儿童目标导向的脚手架的可行性，有可能影响和改进未来教育软件的设计，以及更普遍的目标导向教学法的发展。

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.