In two earlier studies, we developed a new method to measure students’ ability to transfer physics problem-solving skills to new contexts using a sequence of online learning modules, and implemented two interventions in the form of additional learning modules designed to improve transfer ability. The current paper introduces a new data analysis scheme that could improve the accuracy of the measurement by accounting for possible differences in students’ goal orientation and behavior, as well as revealing the possible mechanism by which one of the two interventions improves transfer ability. Based on a $2\times 2$ framework of self-regulated learning, students with a performance-avoidance oriented goal are more likely to guess on some of the assessment attempts in order to save time, resulting in an underestimation of the student populations’ transfer ability. The current analysis shows that about half of the students had frequent brief initial assessment attempts, and significantly lower correct rates on certain modules, which we think is likely to have originated at least in part from students adopting a performance-avoidance strategy. We then divided the remaining population, for which we can be certain that few students adopted a performance-avoidance strategy, based on whether they interacted with one of the intervention modules designed to develop basic problem-solving skills, or passed that module on their first attempt without interacting with the instructional material. By comparing to propensity score matched populations from a previous semester, we found that the improvement in subsequent transfer performance observed in a previous study mainly came from the latter population, suggesting that the intervention served as an effective reminder for students to activate existing skills, but fell short of developing those skills among those who have yet to master it.

中文翻译：

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提高测量在线教学对学生传递物理问题解决能力的影响的准确性

在之前的两项研究中，我们开发了一种新方法来衡量学生使用一系列在线学习模块将物理解决问题的技能转移到新环境中的能力，并以旨在提高转移能力的其他学习模块的形式实施了两种干预措施。本论文介绍了一种新的数据分析方案，该方案可通过考虑学生目标取向和行为的可能差异来提高测量的准确性，并揭示两种干预措施之一提高转移能力的可能机制。基于$\mathrm{2个}\times \mathrm{2个}$在自我调节学习的框架中，以避免成绩为导向的目标的学生更有可能猜测一些评估尝试，以节省时间，从而导致学生群体的转移能力被低估。当前的分析表明，大约一半的学生经常进行简短的初步评估尝试，并且在某些模块上的正确率大大降低，我们认为这至少部分原因是学生采用了避免表现的策略。然后，我们对剩余的人口进行了划分，可以确定是否有很少的学生根据他们是否与旨在发展基本的解决问题技能的干预模块之一互动而采用了避免表现的策略，或在不与教学材料进行互动的情况下，在第一次尝试时就通过了该模块。通过与上一学期倾向得分匹配的人群进行比较，我们发现在先前的研究中观察到的后续转移表现的改善主要来自于后者的人群，这表明该干预措施可以有效地提醒学生激活现有技能，但是在尚未掌握这些技能的人中，未能发展这些技能。