Setting Epistemic Aims in Online Chemistry Learning: Construct Validation and Test of Relations With Learning Outcome

• In Event: 46.086 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 46.086-8 - Motivational and Cognitive Processes: Epistemology

Abstract

This study validated epistemic aims in an Internet-based research context and examined their relations to online learning outcome. A context-specific epistemic-aims questionnaire was developed and administered to 354 college students. Multitrait-multimethod model comparisons provided evidence for construct validity for three epistemic aims—true beliefs, justified beliefs, explanatory connection, which were distinguished from, yet correlated with, mastery goals. Students’ epistemic aims were specific to the chemistry topics in research. Most importantly, learning outcome was found to be associated with two epistemic aims—justifications and explanatory connection: The more students sought justifications in online research, the lower they tended to score on the learning outcome measure, whereas the more students sought explanatory connections between information, the higher they scored on the measure.

Authors

• Ting Dai, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Jennifer G. Cromley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University