Instructor-Led Structural Knowledge Reflection and the Conceptual Structure of Summary Essays (Poster 6)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Wednesday 4:20 p.m.
  In Poster Session: Technology, Instruction, Cognition, and Learning (TICL) Poster Session

Abstract

Observing conceptual structure transitions as networks from lesson to posttest provides another way to describe learning as a transition towards domain normative knowledge (expertise). This quasi-experimental investigation considers the influence of instructor-led reflection on the conceptual structure of students’ essays from lesson to posttest. Architectural engineering undergraduates, after lectures on Sustainability and Green Design, composed a 300-word summary essay using an online writing tool (GIKS), then one lab section participated in an instructor-led reflection of their group-average essay structure while the other two sections wrote but did not have this discussion. Posttest essays were collected the following week. Reflection improved students’ memory structures of the central terms in their essay networks but at the expense of peripheral, unmentioned terms.

Authors

• Roy B. Clariana, Pennsylvania State University

• Ryan L. Solnosky, Pennsylvania State University