Effects of a metacognitive support device in learning environments

Successful learning is mainly based on metacognitive activities which have to be performed and constantly monitored during learning. Research reveals that many learners have difficulties in performing such metacognitive activities spontaneously, which most probably results in lower learning outcomes. The aim of this study is to experimentally analyse the effects of a metacognitive support device combined with a paper-based prompting scheme. With this support device, students are instructed to activate their repertoire of metacognitive knowledge and skills which should further enhance learning and transfer. University students of the experimental group (n = 29) were instructed by means of a metacognitive support device why metacognitive activities are useful and how to apply them during learning. In addition, during learning, they were prompted to apply the metacognitive activities they just had learned. Students of the control group (n = 27) were not instructed why and how to use metacognitive activities, and furthermore, they were not prompted during learning to apply these metacognitive activities. Rather, they were instructed by a computer device how to organise a work place for their studies so all groups were treated in a similar way. The students' learning task was to learn about "psychological theories of using pictures in multimedia learning environments" within 60 min. Immediately afterwards, learning outcome was measured with a test. Altogether, 56 university students participated, counterbalanced according to their prior knowledge as well as metacognitive knowledge. As expected, students of the experimental group showed better transfer performance compared with the control group. In addition, training did increase metacognitive behavior measured by subjective ratings. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.