Faculty of Education - Research Publications
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ItemExploring misconceptions as a trigger for enhancing student learning(Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, Inc, 2017)This article addresses the importance of confronting misconceptions in the teaching of the STEM disciplines. First, we review the central place for threshold concepts in many disciplines and the threat misconceptions pose to quality education. Second, approaches will be offered for confronting misconceptions in the classroom in different contexts. Finally, we discuss what we can learn about these approaches and the common threads that reveal successful approaches. These steps have been explored in relation to four case studies across diverse disciplines. From these case studies, a set of principles about how best to address misconceptions in STEM disciplines has been distilled. As conceptual knowledge increases in importance in higher education, effective strategies for helping students develop accurate conceptual understanding will also be increasingly critical.
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ItemModels for understanding student engagement in digital learning environments(Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, 2016)Digital learning environments are increasingly prevalent in higher education. The flexible and less constrained nature of these environments, means students often need to be more autonomous in managing their own learning. This implies that students are sufficiently selfmotivated to successfully engage in autonomous learning. The concept of "student engagement" has shown promise in assisting researchers' and educators' understanding of how students' general involvement in study, and their more specific completion of learning tasks, can lead to beneficial outcomes in digital learning environments. However, student engagement has taken on multiple, diffuse definitions in higher education creating confusion about what engagement is and how best to promote it. In this paper we build on a model of engagement from organisational psychology that offers insight into task-level engagement. Established models in the area of student motivation are integrated to bring clarity to the construct at task-level in digital learning environments.
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ItemConfidence drives exploration strategies in interactive simulations(ASCILITE, 2016-12-01)Maximising the benefits of digital learning environments requires understanding how students process what they are exposed to in these environments. Besides approaches based on examining information processing within the cognitive domain, the importance of including emotions has been recently addressed. This study aimed to explore emotional dynamics during discovery learning in an interactive simulation, with continuous measures of self-reported confidence and challenge. Interactions from participants were recorded and two groups were created according to the exploration strategy used: systematic or non-systematic. Visual exploration was also measured by eye tracking as well as knowledge at pre- and post-test. Results suggest that learners using a systematic exploration strategy ran significantly more simulation cycles than non-systematic learners. Moreover, the latter group reported to be significantly less challenged and more confident about understanding the material. These results emphasise the importance of student perceptions of their capabilities when learning in flexible, less structured digital environments.
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ItemAll roads lead to Rome: Tracking students’ affect as they overcome misconceptions(ASCILITE, 2016-11-28)Helping students to overcome misconceptions is a complex problem in digital learning environments in which students need to monitor their own progress and self-regulate their own learning. This is particularly so in flexible, discovery-based environments that have been criticised for the lack of support and structure provided to students. Emerging evidence suggests that discovery-based environments might be ineffective due to students becoming confused, frustrated or bored. In the study reported here, we examined the affective experience of students as they worked to overcome a common misconception in a discovery-based environment. While the results suggest that students experience a range of emotions, they all successfully overcame their initial misconception. Implications for the investigation of student affect in discovery-based environments and the design of these environments are also discussed.
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ItemConceptual change in psychology: Why being confused is beneficial for learning(Australian Psycological Society, 2015)Psychology, as a disciplinary area of study, has unique epistemological attributes that require careful consideration during the process of curriculum design. Unlike most other disciplines (with some notable exceptions) students enter into psychology programs with extensive experience in the basic subject matter: thought, emotion, personality and behaviour. Even students entering higher education straight from secondary school have broad experience in dealing with and attempting to predict and understand the thinking and behaviour of others. Many of these experiences, however, develop into theories and notions about the discipline and the practice of psychology that are not always accurate (Lodge et al., 2011). The theories that people naïve to the body of knowledge in psychology develop on the basis of their experiences have been described as ‘folk psychology’ (Arico, 2010). Previous conceptions of the subject matter, like folk psychological notions, can be a hindrance to learning in some instances but can also be powerful levers for conceptual change when used strategically as part of a deliberate design for learning (Vosniadou, 2012). In this presentation, I will discuss the results of studies in an ongoing program of research being conducted as part of the ARC funded Science of Learning Research Centre on the essential role of confusion in conceptual change. I will then explore the potential implications of this research for curriculum design in psychology by drawing on notions of productive failure (Kapur, 2008) and desirable difficulties (Bjork & Bjork, 2011). As part of this exploration, I will describe methods that have been found to be particularly successful in using confusion to overcome misconceptions in other disciplines where students bring extensive prior experience into class with them, such as physics (e.g. Muller et al., 2007). The ultimate aim of this presentation is to outline an alternate approach to curriculum design and sequencing in psychology that does not take a hierarchical path from recollection to application to critical appraisal of knowledge but rather exploits misconceptions and confusion as mechanisms for promoting lasting conceptual change.
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ItemDesirable and difficult: Translating psychological science for enhancing teaching practice(Australian Psychological Society, 2014)
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ItemPrior knowledge, confidence and understanding in interactive tutorials and simulations(ascilite, 2015)The balance between confidence and understanding can be difficult for students to manage, particularly in digital learning environments where they start with different levels of prior knowledge. The level of prior knowledge and perception of how well understood this prior knowledge is will drive the level of engagement and integration of new knowledge as students are exposed to it. Exploring the relationship between these factors is therefore important for the design of digital learning environments. In this paper we describe two studies examining the levels of confidence and understanding reported by students completing interactive and non-interactive exercises in a digital learning environment. The reported levels of confidence and understanding are then contrasted against pre- and post-test performance and self-reports of the experience completed at the conclusion of the session. The results suggest that students' prior knowledge influences their confidence and perceived difficulty of the material but does not necessarily influence performance.
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ItemModelling psychological factors for predicting the success of non-traditional students(Unistars, 2015)Psychological factors underpinning student success have received some attention in the higher education literature but remain relatively unexplored. The present study utilised structural equation modelling to construct a model that integrates psychological factors and predicts measures of student success, namely student satisfaction and grade point average. Fifty-six participants from a population of non-traditional university students completed an online survey, which predominantly consisted of self-report measures based on those created in light of previous theory. The final model was deemed an acceptable fit of the data, and suggested that that (a) Lizzio’s (2006) Five Senses Framework predicts student satisfaction, (b) preference for particular clusters of cognitive styles predict grade point average, and (c) the Five Senses Framework predicts preference for cognitive styles. The results of this study provide evidence for the need to incorporate numerous psychological factors into the design of transition and support programs.