Activation Of Prior Knowledge Research Articles

Engineering Education in the Age of AI: Analysis of the Impact of Chatbots on Learning in Engineering

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of using AI chatbots on learning within the context of engineering education. We framed this study on the principles of how learning works in order to describe the contributions and challenges of AI chatbots in five categories: (1) facilitating the acquisition, completion, or activation of prior knowledge and helping organize knowledge and making connections; (2) enhancing student motivation to learn; (3) fostering self-directed learning and the acquisition, practice, and application of the skills and knowledge they acquire; (4) supporting goal-directed practice and feedback; and (5) addressing student diversity and creating a positive classroom environment. To elicit the uses, benefits, and drawbacks of using AI chatbots in students’ learning, we conducted a thematic analysis of qualitative data gathered from surveying 38 student volunteers from 5 different electronic and mechatronic engineering courses at a South American university. Based on a literature review and an evidence-based discussion, we offer practical suggestions for instructors who want to promote the use of AI to enhance their students’ learning.

Supporting Students' Knowledge Activation before, during, and after Reading

AbstractKnowledge activation and knowledge building are essential for reading comprehension. Yet, how can teachers support students in accessing and applying their existing knowledge and experiences during reading? This article provides six evidence‐based principles to consider during literacy instruction, which are drawn from a recent systematic literature review that examined prior knowledge activation instructional scaffolds. These principles are: (a) activate knowledge before, during, and after reading; (b) activate knowledge collaboratively; (c) support students in understanding connections between concepts; (d) support students in recognizing discrepancies between their knowledge and the text; (e) address misunderstandings; and (f) consider the amount of topic‐specific knowledge that students have. These principles have the potential to shift how teachers think about the role of knowledge activation throughout the reading process.

Problematising Simplicity: Addressing Comprehension Gaps of RFI’s ‘Le Journal en Français Facile’

This paper evaluates Malawian learners’ French language comprehension abilities concerning the French radio program ‘Le Journal en français facile’ (The News in Simple French), broadcast by Radio France Internationale. Specifically, it assesses learners’ levels of aural comprehension of this Francophone news content designed for non-native audiences. The paper examines whether the universal applicability of the ‘français facile’ (simple French) concept across heterogeneous learners can be assumed, considering linguistic aspects deemed elementary from a Francophone perspective may not prove equivalently rudimentary for anglophone learners of French. Methodologically, the paper is grounded in the Bottom-up and Top-down listening comprehension model, which emphasises integrating linguistic and prior sociocultural knowledge to facilitate aural meaningmaking. Through French listening exercises and teacher interviews with a sample of Malawian college students, the study highlights limitations in comprehension, with listeners restricted to grasping essential lexical news components like numbers, names and locations while failing to parse complex news concepts —attributed to newscaster accent, pronunciation, speech rate, unfamiliar vocabulary, and insufficient prior knowledge activation. This paper argues the notion of “simple” French may be misconstrued when applied uniformly across diverse global learners engaging with RFI broadcasts, evidenced by difficulty comprehending the news program among numerous Malawian learners despite its simplified linguistic profile. Mastery of these broadcasts, it is contended, necessitates more advanced proficiency.

Classifying and modeling secondary students’ active learning in a virtual learning environment through generated questions

The present research study investigated students' active learning activities at three time points during the use of a virtual learning environment (VLE) on cardiac anatomy and physiology. Because VLEs are not only immersive but also interactive, the user must engage with the instruction to move the instruction forward; thus, engaging the user in an active (rather than passive) educative experience. What types of active learning is garnered from such educational technologies, among secondary aged science learners, was the focus of the study. By using open-ended questioning and the active learning framework by Chi (2009), this research study collected students' questions they had about the science content which was then categorized inductively and deductively by active processes (activation of prior knowledge), constructive processes (garnering new knowledge), and interactive processes (creating new understandings beyond the scope of the curriculum). Results from coding questions from 151 secondary students (75 in sixth grade and 76 in ninth grade) revealed significance in sixth graders’ abilities to progress from active processes to the higher and more sophisticated learning processes; significant changes were found among ninth graders to progress from active to constructive processes and from constructive to interactive learning processes. The presence of interactive processes suggests that VLEs are immersive, interactive, and able to foster robust science learning.

Do students learn more from failing alone or in groups? Insights into the effects of collaborative versus individual problem solving in productive failure

Productive Failure (PF) is an instructional design that implements a problem-solving phase which aims at preparing students for learning from a subsequent instruction. PF has been shown to facilitate students’ conceptual knowledge acquisition in the mathematical domain. Collaboration has been described as a vital design component of PF, but studies that have investigated the role of collaboration in PF empirically so far, were not able to confirm the necessity of collaboration in PF. However, these studies have diverged significantly from prior traditional PF studies and design criteria. Therefore, the role of collaboration in PF remains unclear. In an experimental study that is based on the traditional design of PF, we compared a collaborative and an individual problem-solving setting. It was hypothesized that collaboration facilitates the beneficial preparatory mechanisms of the PF problem-solving phase: prior knowledge activation, awareness of knowledge gaps, and recognition of deep features. In a mediation analysis, the effects of collaborative and individual problem solving on conceptual knowledge acquisition as mediated through the preparatory mechanisms were tested. In contrast to the hypotheses, no mediations or differences between conditions were found. Thus, collaboration does not hold a major preparatory function in itself for the design of PF.

Leveraging What Students Know to Make Sense of Texts: What the Research Says About Prior Knowledge Activation

This systematic literature review examined the research on prior knowledge and its activation to ascertain how these terms are defined, what specific techniques have been empirically investigated, and the conditions under which prior knowledge activation facilitated students’ comprehension. Fifty-four articles met the inclusion criteria and revealed that the terms prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation were often vaguely defined. Further, 30 unique techniques for activating readers’ prior knowledge representing eight different categories were identified. Those categories were open-ended prompts, procedural or strategic supports during reading, visual representations, analogical reasoning, text alteration, augmented activation, extratextual activities, and spontaneous activation. Techniques meant to facilitate knowledge activation prior to reading were most common, although the prompting of students’ existing knowledge was beneficial during and after reading as well. Variability in the effectiveness of activation techniques was related, in part, to the amount, accuracy, and specificity of students’ knowledge. Based on the key findings identified in this review, recommendations for future inquiry are forwarded, including suggested definitions of prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation.

DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILL BY ACTIVATING STUDENTS’ PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

This article considers the similarities and differences between listening and reading, and then looks specifically at why the activation of prior knowledge is perhaps even more important in listening than in reading comprehension. Finally, there is a concrete example of activating prior knowledge in listening materials.

Forecasting Earthquake Magnitude and Epicenter by Incorporating Spatiotemporal Priors Into Deep Neural Networks

Forecasting earthquake magnitude and epicenter is of great significance for disaster management and hazard mitigation. Existing machine learning-based earthquake forecasting has faced two shortcomings: limited historical earthquake samples for training and lack of explicit consideration of seismic prior knowledge. We propose a novel Spatio-Temporal Priors-Informed Deep Networks (STPiDN) that incorporates seismic spatio-temporal prior knowledge into deep neural networks using limited historical earthquake samples. In our method, a Physics-informed Recurrent Graph Network (PRGN) is developed to extract representations of observed earthquake precursor data in a physics-informed manner. In order to make prior-guided earthquake predictions, we develop seismic prior knowledge activation layers that combine earthquake event representations with prior knowledge (e.g. fault distribution) through activation gates. An adaptive multi-task loss function is proposed to achieve joint magnitude and epicenter forecasting with the consideration of alleviating the magnitude and epicenter imbalance problem. Our empirical evaluation results show that the proposed forecasting method outperforms several competing methods on a real-world earthquake dataset, proving that physics-informed prediction methods have the potential to capture complex earthquake patterns using limited training samples.

Vocabulary, text coverage, word frequency and the lexical threshold in elementary school reading comprehension

Vocabulary knowledge is one of the most important elements of reading comprehension. Text coverage is the proportion of known words in a given text. We hypothesize that text comprehension increases exponentially with text coverage due to network effects and activation of prior knowledge. In addition, the lexical threshold hypothesis states that text comprehension increases faster above a certain amount of text coverage. The exponential relationship between text coverage and text comprehension, as well as the lexical threshold, are at the heart of text comprehension theory and are of great interest for optimizing language instruction. In this study, we first used vocabulary knowledge to estimate text coverage based on test scores from N = 924 German fourth graders. Second, we compared linear with non-linear models of text coverage and vocabulary knowledge to explain text comprehension. Third, we used a broken-line regression to estimate a lexical threshold. The results showed an exponential relationship between text coverage and text comprehension. Moreover, text coverage explained text comprehension better than vocabulary knowledge, and text comprehension increased more quickly above 56% text coverage. From an instructional perspective, the results suggest that reading activities with text coverage below 56% are too difficult for readers and likely inappropriate for instructional purposes. Further applications of the results, such as for standard setting and readability analyses, are discussed.

An integrated model of learning from errors

Errors are inevitable in most learning contexts, but under the right conditions, they can be beneficial for learning. Prior research indicates that generating and learning from errors can promote retention of knowledge, higher-level learning, and self-regulation. The present review proposes an integrated theoretical model to explain two major phases of learning from self-generated errors: the Generating Errors (GE) phase, which contributes to learning via semantically related prior knowledge activation, and the Detecting and Correcting Errors (DCE) phase, which contributes to learning via self-explanation when processing and comparing one’s responses with provided reference information to promote high-quality internal feedback. Our model identifies general design principles that support each phase based on prior empirical research. We conclude by identifying research gaps and future directions regarding specific design features of the GE and DCE phases and the role of students’ emotion, motivation, and individual differences in learning from errors.

REGULATING COGNITIVE LOAD: PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ACTIVATION IN LEARNING ECOSYSTEM

The ecosystem is a multidiscipline and complex subject which interrelated with other biological concepts, making it challenging to understand and may lead to cognitive overload. This paper analyzed the effects of prior knowledge activation using video on students' cognitive load when learning about the ecosystem. Data were obtained from prior knowledge tests, a task complexity worksheet, a subjective rating scale, and reasoning ability tests as learning achievement. The effect of prior knowledge activation using video on intrinsic cognitive load (ICL) and extraneous cognitive load (ECL) was evaluated and discussed.

The limited use of instructional design guidelines in healthcare simulation scenarios: an expert appraisal

BackgroundSystematic reviews on simulation training effectiveness have pointed to the need to adhere to evidence-based instructional design (ID) guidelines. ID guidelines derive from sound cognitive theories and aim to optimize complex learning (integration of knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and learning transfer (application of acquired knowledge and skills in the workplace). The purpose of this study was to explore adherence to ID guidelines in simulation training programs for dealing with postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), a high-risk situation and the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide.MethodsA total of 40 raters analyzed simulation training programs as described in 32 articles. The articles were divided into four subsets of seven articles and one subset of four articles. Each subset was judged by seven to ten raters on adherence to ID guidelines. The 5-point Likert score rating scale was based on Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction and included items relating to key ID features categorized into five subscales: authenticity, activation of prior knowledge, demonstration, application, and integration/transfer. The authors searched for articles published in English between January 2007 and March 2017 in PubMed, Eric, and Google Scholar and calculated the mean Likert-scale score, per subscale, and interrater reliability (IRR).ResultsThe mean Likert-scale scores calculated for all subscales were < 3.00. For the number of raters used to judge the papers in this study (varying between 7 and 10), the IRR was found to be excellent for the authenticity and integration/transfer subscales, good-to-excellent for the activation of prior knowledge and application subscales, and fair-to-good for the demonstration subscale.ConclusionThe results demonstrate a paucity of the description of adherence to evidence-based ID guidelines in current simulation trainings for a high-risk situation such as PPH.

The Importance of Semantic Network Brain Regions in Integrating Prior Knowledge with an Ongoing Dialogue.

To understand a dialogue, we need to know the topics that are being discussed. This enables us to integrate our knowledge of what was said previously to interpret the current dialogue. This study involved a large-scale behavioral experiment conducted online and a separate fMRI experiment, both testing human participants. In both, we selectively manipulated knowledge about the narrative content of dialogues presented in short videos. The clips were scenes from situation comedies that were split into two parts. The speech in the part 1 clips could either be presented normally or spectrally rotated to render it unintelligible. The part 2 clips that concluded the scenes were always presented normally. The behavioral experiment showed that knowledge of the preceding narrative boosted memory for the part 2 clips as well as increased the intersubject semantic similarity of recalled descriptions of the dialogues. The fMRI experiment replicated the finding that prior knowledge improved memory for the conclusions of the dialogues. Furthermore, prior knowledge strengthened temporal intersubject correlations in brain regions including the left angular gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus. Together, these findings show that (1) prior knowledge constrains the interpretation of a dialogue to be more similar across individuals; and (2), consistent with this, the activation of brain regions involved in semantic control processing is also more similar between individuals who share the same prior knowledge. Processing in these regions likely supports the activation and integration of prior knowledge, which helps people to better understand and remember dialogues as they unfold.

Impact of big data resources on clinicians’ activation of prior medical knowledge

BackgroundActivating prior medical knowledge in diagnosis and treatment is an important basis for clinicians to improve their care ability. However, it has not been systematically explained whether and how various big data resources affect the activation of prior knowledge in the big data environment faced by clinicians. ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding on how the activation of prior knowledge of clinicians is affected by a wide range of shared and private big data resources, to reveal the impact of big data resources on clinical competence and professional development of clinicians. MethodThrough the comprehensive analysis of extant research results, big data resources are classified as big data itself, big data technology and big data services at the public and institutional levels. A survey was conducted on clinicians and IT personnel in Chinese hospitals. A total of 616 surveys are completed, involving 308 medical institutions. Each medical institution includes a clinician and an IT personnel. SmartPLS version 2.0 software package was used to test the direct impact of big data resources on the activation of prior knowledge. We further analyze their indirect impact of those big data resources without direct impact. Results(1) Big data quality environment at the institutional level and the big data sharing environment at the public level directly affect activation of prior medical knowledge; (2) Big data service environment at the institutional level directly affects activation of prior medical knowledge; (3) Big data deployment environment at the institutional level and big data service environment at the public level have no direct impact on activation of prior knowledge of clinicians, but they have an indirect impact through big data quality environment and service environment at the institutional level and the big data sharing environment at the public level. ConclusionsBig data technology, big data itself and big data service at the public level and institutional level interact and influence each other to activate prior medical knowledge. This study highlights the implications of big data resources on improvement of clinicians’ diagnosis and treatment ability.

Promoting peer assessment – learner to learner feedback in a multilingual high school english first additional language setting

Feedback, further known as assessment in this research, is critical to learners’ growth and learning. This study is grounded in verbal and written peer experiences, acquired throughout peer evaluation in a multilingual context. This study aims to determine the problems of Grade 11 EFAL learners with peer assessment and how to develop peer assessment practices in a multilingual setting in the Further Education and Training phase. There were 27 learners in the class. Designated three learners gave three demonstrations on various matters, premised on a requisite Grade 11 literature set book, and were graded by their classmates. The perspectives of the learners who were assigned to work in groups were elicited by requesting them to respond to open ended questions in writing after their classmates’ presentations. According to the findings, some peer assessments can be subjective depending on the bond between the assessor and the assessed. The learners had a natural feeling of inadequacy in their assessments. When giving feedback in a multilingual setting, it becomes important to give it in a language they are most comfortable with. Similarly, helping students relate new information from peers to the knowledge that they already have helps them to understand and organise information in meaningful ways. Thus, the learners are comfortable with feedback that addresses the known that is then linked to the unknown. This calls for prior knowledge activation by other learners or even the teacher because new information is better integrated with existing information.Once students are used to peer assessment and have overcome their initial fears and hesitations, reliability is likely to be quite high, not that different from teacher reliability

Las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre cómo la enseñanza basada en contenido apoya el desarrollo del aprendiz en un contexto de lengua extranjera

Ample studies on content-based instruction (CBI) provide strong evidence as to the effectiveness of this methodology in developing language and content knowledge in students; however, there is much less information as to why this methodology is so effective. Building on the results of a previous study, this paper discusses the findings of a qualitative study to see how CBIsupports language development. The data collected through student interviews and learning journals revealed that the exposure to authentic material that was meaningful, interesting, and relevant to students’ present and future needs, activation of prior knowledge, and the specific methodology used in class were the most important factors which supported language and content development.

Do EFL Teachers Reduce the Reading Gap in Qatar? A Study of Strategy Instruction in Government Schools

Teachers’ instructional practices are crucial to students’ achievement in reading comprehension. Students’ low English reading competence in Qatar’s government schools raises concerns about not only reading comprehension strategy instruction, but also, subsequently, learning as a natural outcome of teachers’ praxis. This quantitative survey investigated English as a foreign language (EFL) reading comprehension strategy instruction of a broad cross-sectional sample of (1-12) EFL teachers (n=754) of government schools in Qatar. The study examines teachers’ most frequently used strategies and explicit strategy instruction. To relate the findings of an exploratory data analysis, descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, and frequencies, were calculated for each 5-point Likert scale questionnaire item using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS-Version 24) statistics software. Results revealed that participant teachers reported a generally moderate and high frequency of using comprehension strategies (lowest mean 3.56 and highest mean 4.52). The seven most used strategies (mean score ≥4) were: Identify main ideas, set purpose for reading, predictions, preview text, monitor comprehension, prior knowledge activation, and handle unfamiliar words. Conversely, the five strategies reported a comparatively lower use frequency (mean score ˂4) were: Text structure, questioning, visualizing, summarizing, and think aloud. The major findings on explicit strategy instruction indicated that teachers ignored the gradual release of responsibility to students. The implications of these findings suggest that EFL teachers demonstrate moderate use of reading comprehension strategy instruction. Further recommendations for the Ministry of Education, school principals, and teachers are offered.

Developing Visible Thinking and Motivation Through the Curricular Design of an Escape Room in Higher Education

Introduction. The term escape room has undergone a notable evolution in recent years, extending its presence to areas not only recreational but also business or educational. The defining traits (overcoming obstacles, problem-solving, teamwork, time management...) have proven to be valid in business and education. This study presents the pedagogical design of an escape room based on visible thinking and analyses its effect on the motivation and cognitive processes of higher education students. Method. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental research with pretest/post-test was conducted, and it was evaluated whether the instructional design of the escape room was adequate to enhance the learning of the 238 students, whether it was motivating, and whether it contributed to the development of cognitive processes. We used two structured questionnaires with multiple-choice questions and one questionnaire with open-ended questions. We also applied a mixed method for quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. Results. The results show that the students consider the characteristics of the escape room and the organization of its elements to be of high quality; they also show that the curricular design of the escape room enhances students’ learning. In particular, the students consider that they have developed group thinking, critical thinking, and the activation of prior knowledge through the escape room and have found it a motivating experience. Conclusions. The use of the escape room in educational environments has a high educational potential. This is not only because it encourages the development of higher-order cognitive processes but also because it contributes to teamwork, self-regulation, and student motivation. However, it must be designed as a significant part of the didactic program, taking special care in the development of competences and thinking.

Do prior knowledge, model-observer similarity and social comparison influence the effectiveness of eye movement modeling examples for supporting multimedia learning?

We investigated in an experiment with 180 university students the joint role of prior knowledge, alleged model competence, and social comparison orientation regarding the effectiveness of Eye Movement Modeling Examples (EMME) for supporting multimedia learning. EMME consisted of short videos with gaze replays of an instructed model demonstrating effective multimedia processing strategies. Participants were either instructed that the model in the EMME-videos was a successful learner (competent model) or another participant (peer model). Participants in a control condition received no EMME. Furthermore, we activated domain-relevant prior knowledge in half of the participants before watching the EMME. Against our expectations, we found no influence of either prior knowledge activation or model-observer similarity. As expected, our results indicated that EMME fostered multimedia learning. This was also supported by findings from small-scale meta-analyses that were conducted with the focus on the effect of EMME for multimedia learning and potential moderators of the effect. Moreover, results showed first evidence that social comparison orientation interacts with (alleged) model competence regarding the effectiveness of EMME. Further research is needed to follow up on the influence of individual factors as well as social cues on the effectiveness of EMME.

How cognitive psychology changed the face of medical education research

In this article, the contributions of cognitive psychology to research and development of medical education are assessed. The cognitive psychology of learning consists of activation of prior knowledge while processing new information and elaboration on the resulting new knowledge to facilitate storing in long-term memory. This process is limited by the size of working memory. Six interventions based on cognitive theory that facilitate learning and expertise development are discussed: (1) Fostering self-explanation, (2) elaborative discussion, and (3) distributed practice; (4) help with decreasing cognitive load, (5) promoting retrieval practice, and (6) supporting interleaving practice. These interventions contribute in different measure to various instructional methods in use in medical education: problem-based learning, team-based learning, worked examples, mixed practice, serial-cue presentation, and deliberate reflection. The article concludes that systematic research into the applicability of these ideas to the practice of medical education presently is limited and should be intensified.