For the purpose of this paper, this review of literature
will first elaborate on three areas: learning strategies, embedding
learning strategies in hypermedia-assisted instruction, and cognitive
styles. Definitions and categorization will be presented. Then, the
research conducted in these areas will be discussed and finally, the focus
will shift to the combined effect of cognitive styles and learning
strategies. This review of literature will conclude with a synthesis of
research results.
I. Learning Strategies
According to Borkowski et al. (1990), contemporary psychological research has yielded three particularly important findings in relation to student's learning. The first finding is
that students must be strategic and engage in strategies to build connections between new knowledge and prior knowledge.
The second finding is
that students must possess and utilize metacognitive knowledge to control their thinking and
the third is
that students must believe that they are responsible for their learning (Seifert & Wheeler, 1994).
The first two findings are related to the domain of learning strategies. There are two aspects of learning strategies.
One aspect of learning strategies involves plans or mental activities which "students may use to acquire, retain, and retrieve different kinds of knowledge and performance" (Rigney, 1978, p.165).
These
strategies are generally referred to as cognitive
strategies. Cognitive
strategies may include such activities as acquiring, selecting and
organizing information, rehearsing material to be learned, relating new
material to information in memory, and retaining and retrieving different
kinds of knowledge.
Learning strategies that deal with strategy learning or "learning to learn" are called metacognitive strategies.
Metacognitive strategy involves cognitive activities such as checking, monitoring, planning, and prediction (Brown, 1987).
People who have metacognitive strategies are equipped with the knowledge and control over their thinking and learning activities.
The term "learning strategy" generally includes both cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies. Learning strategies are considered to be the most significant current contributions of cognitive psychology to instructional design. (West, Famer, & Wolff, 1991)
This paper will focus on the study of learning strategies in a hypermedia program; therefore, there will be more discussions on this topic.
Next, the theoretical framework for learning strategies--information-processing theory---will be presented.
Information-Processing Theory
The development of cognitive psychology helped confirm the importance of learning strategies. Cognitive psychologists have proposed the information-processing theory.
They identified that memory storage system has two levels: working memory (WM) (also called short-term memory) and long-term memory (LTM) (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968, 1971).
When a stimulus is perceived or attended to, the input is transferred to working memory.
The working memory can only keep limited amount of information for a short period of time. However, if the new information is rehearsed or related to the prior knowledge in the long-term memory, then it can be assimilated into long-term memory.
The learning process involves integrating new materials into long-term memory in a meaningful fashion.
To encode information, learners first attend to the new information and transfer it from the sensory register to working memory.
Learners can also activate related knowledge in their long-term memory and build links between new information and prior knowledge.
When learning involves
long-term memory, it is a more meaningful learning process. Thus, learners
should integrate as much information into long-term memory (Schunk, 1991).
In addition, cognitive psychologists have also identified three types of knowledge: declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge. Each type of knowledge requires a different function of the memory system.
Declarative knowledge refers to the aspect of "knowing that" and implies the awareness of information.
Procedural knowledge refers to the aspect of "knowing how" and relates to the information about procedures, rules, and principles.
Conditional knowledge refers to the
aspect of "knowing when and why" and implies the decision to select and
use specific procedures, rules and principles.
Learning strategies assist in acquiring different types of knowledge as well as in modifying and regulating each phase in the information processing system (Gagne, 1977).
Cognitive strategies may be referred to as declarative and procedural knowledge; they help assimilate information into long-term memory.
Metacognitive strategies, on the other hand, are referred to as conditional knowledge which operates the "executive control" on the use of learning strategies.
In other words, according to what Gagne (1977) has specified, learning strategies help learners
attend to facts of a particular category,
encode new information,
retrieve knowledge from their long-term memory and
implement problem-solving skills.
Therefore, learning strategies serve an important
role in the learning process. In the following, this paper will examine
each kind of learning strategy in more detail.
Cognitive Strategies
Weinstein and Mayer (1986) categorized learning strategies into eight types:
basic rehearsal strategies
omplex rehearsal strategies,
basic elaboration strategies,
complex elaboration strategies,
basic organizational strategies, (
complex organizational strategies,
comprehension-monitoring strategies, and
affective and motivational strategies.
Although this categorization
was useful, it does not provide design guidelines for instructional
designer on how and when the learning strategies could be employed.
In contrast, West, Farmer, and Wolff (1991) presented
another categorization:
chunking (or organizing) strategies,
spatial learning strategies,
bridging strategies, and
general purpose strategies.
Besides devising a new way of categorization, they also provide designer's guidelines for the use and teaching of these learning strategies as well as possibilities of hybridization.
In the book "Instructional Design--Implications from Cognitive Science", they introduced nine kinds of cognitive strategies:
chunking,
frames, type one,
frames, type two,
concept mapping,
advance organizer, (
metaphor-analogy,
rehearsal
imagery, and
mnemonics.
West
et al. (1991) presented a detailed description of each strategy and
research conducted on these strategies. They conclude that instructional
designers can make great use of these strategies. Likewise, these
cognitive strategies may also be applied in hypermedia-assisted
instruction.
Research on Cognitive Strategies
Most of these cognitive strategies have been broadly researched and are recognized as effective ways of learning. Park (1995) synthesized the research findings on cognitive strategies and listed three categorizes of learning strategies:
strongly effective strategies
weakly effective strategies, and
strategies that need more research.
Those strongly effective strategies include
adjunct questions,
reflective questions,
summarization,
note taking,
keyword method,
pegword method,
method of loci, and
advance organizer.
The weakly effective strategy is underlining and the strategies that need more research are
concept mapping,
vee diagram,
matrix frames and
signaling.
His conclusion derived from meta-analyses or print-based research, but he suggested that these learning strategies may also be applied in Computer-Assisted-Instruction (CAI). Concluding from his research, this study is intended to apply some of those strongly effective strategies such as advance organizer, note taking, summarization and reflective questions in a hypermedia environment.
In addition, this study will also include concept mapping in the program. Horton et al. (1993) conducted a meta-analysis and examined the effectiveness of concept mapping as an instructional tool for improving students' achievement and as a strategy for improving students' attitudes. They found that the top-down instructional strategy of concept mapping has had generally positive effects on students' achievement, and students' attitudes. The results also showed that there was little difference in the effectiveness of teacher-prepared versus student-prepared concept maps in improving students' achievement. Therefore, concept mapping has also been shown to be an effective strategy in improving achievement. In the study, concept maps will be embedded as a learning strategy in the hypermedia program. However, before more discussion on embedding strategies in the hypermedia program, this paper will first examine the strategies for monitoring strategies --metacognitive strategies.
Metacognitive Strategies
Metacognitive strategies have been considered as a very important aspect of learning strategy. Metacognitive strategies focus on establishing one's metacognition on learning. The definition of metacognition relates to an individual's awareness, knowledge, and use of the monitoring process of cognitive goals for the purpose of increasing understanding and retention of learning material (Brezin, 1980). In other words, metacognition is the cognition about monitoring and regulating the cognitive process.
According to Bonds et al. (1992), metacognition includes two basic aspects. The first aspect is
that the learner is aware of the nature of the learning task and the requirement for reaching this task.
The second one is
that the learner possess knowledge pertinent to finishing the learning task.
Therefore, people with metacognitive strategies have the knowledge of new information and cognitive strategies.
Metacognitive strategies have been classified into five classes of monitoring strategies:
planning,
attending,
encoding,
reviewing, and
evaluating (Brezin, 1980).
Planning strategies include
selecting (learning goals),
preparing (activating relevant memory schemata),
gauging (determining difficulty of tasks and depth of processing involved), and
estimating (predicting the information processing demands of the task).
Attending strategies include
focusing (on materials),
searching (relating presented information to memory),
ontrasting (comparing presented information to memory), and
validating (confirming presented information with existing knowledge).
Encoding strategies include
elaborating (linking presented information with existing knowledge), and
qualitatively relating (linking presented information with deeper levels of existing knowledge).
Reviewing strategies include
confirming (using new information),
repeating (practice recall), and
revising.
Evaluating strategies include
testing (determine the consistency of new information), and
judging (Jonassen, 1988).
To sum up, all these metacognitive strategies aim at monitoring the learning process.
These metacognitive strategies may be shown in the form of cognitive strategies and appear to overlap with cognitive strategies.
These metacognitive strategies include such tools as
advance organizer,
concept mapping, and
other monitoring-related activities such as questions-generating and prompt messages which will enable learners to think about their learning process.
The distinction lies in that when
these metacognitive strategies serve as cognitive strategies, their
function is to process information while as metacognitive strategies,
their function is to monitor learning rather than to produce it (Jonassen,
1988).
Research on Metacognitive Strategies
Much research conducted on print-based media has indicated the relationship between metacognitive strategies and academic achievement. For example, Ryan's (1984) study found that college students who used "comprehension standards" to monitor their comprehension in an introductory psychology course performed better academically than those who used "knowledge standards." Slife et al. (1985) examined the performance of students of varying mathematical aptitude and different metacognitive ability. They found that high-metacognitive students were more likely to correctly monitor right and wrong answers than were low-metacognitive students. They also concluded that metacognition was an independent construct from general cognition. Swanson (1990) investigated whether children from fourth or fifth grades with high levels of metacognitive knowledge about problem solving could compensate for their overall low aptitude. The results showed that regardless of these children's overall aptitude level, higher metacognitive children outperformed lower metacognitive children in problem solving.
In Applegate et al. 's (1994) case studies, the researchers used metacognitive strategies to enhance achievement for two at-risk liberal arts college students. The research results were very encouraging: both students with different needs responded very well to a combination of metacognitive strategies such as concept mapping, self-questioning and predicting. All these studies explored different aspects of metacognitive strategies and they all obtained positive results. The effectiveness of metacognitive strategies in print-based media have been established.
In addition, there is a limited amount of research on metacognitive strategies in computer-based programs.
Veenman, Elshout, and Busato (1994) tried to determine whether providing students with metacognitive instructions during a computer simulation environment will result in better learning outcomes than unguided discovery learning. High and low intelligence students worked in either a metacognitive-mediated or unguided discovery environment for learning the principles of electricity. Analyses of thinking aloud protocols showed that metacognitive-mediated subjects exhibited a better working method than subjects in the unguided discovery condition. However, in a quantitative posttest, only low intelligence metacognitive-mediated subjects showed enhanced performance and no learning effects of metacognitive instruction were detected in the analysis of the retention tests.
Chiquito's (1995) pilot test used advance organizers and captioning as metacognitive strategies to teach Spanish in a hypermedia instructional program. The result indicated that the group who used either advance organizer or captioning showed significant differences on comprehension in one scene but not in the other scene of the program. The researcher interpreted the result as being confounded by other factors such as the content of the scenes, the type of advance organizer and the linguistic and discourse structure of the advance organizer and captioning.
More research needs to be done concerning the use of metacognitive strategies in computer-based instruction, especially in hypermedia-assisted instruction. Since metacognitive strategies are proven to be beneficial in print-based learning, it should be determined whether computer-based instruction, especially hypermedia-assisted instruction, can help learners acquire metacognitive strategies and how should instructional programs be designed to facilitate learners the most. In the following, this paper will look at ways to teach metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies in computer-based instruction.