Not a Magic Bullet: The Effect of Scaffolding on Knowledge and Attitudes in Online Simulations

Abstract

Common wisdom and prior research suggest that students with low prior knowledge are in greater need for scaffolding. However, some forms of scaffolding may overload novice-students' cognitive capacity or short-circuit productive exploration of the problem space. Hence, we evaluate the effectiveness of scaffolding in a virtual simulation in physics, considering students' attitudes and prior knowledge. 100 undergraduate students completed either a scaffolded or a relatively unstructured activity, followed by another unstructured activity. While the given scaffolding was beneficial for students with high prior knowledge, it did not assist students with low prior knowledge. Furthermore, the scaffolded activity increased students' attitudes towards memory-and-recall in a way that transferred to the later unsupported activity, where these goals were no longer appropriate. Last, prior knowledge did not contribute to learning outcomes in the presence of intuitive grounded feedback. We explain these results in terms of productive failure and cognitive load.