The role of metacognitive skills in learning to solve problems

Chapter 5
STUDY II: LEARNING REVISITED
This chapter 1 covers the results of the second study. The main aim of
the study is to establish baseline measurements concerning learning success
of students who work with the fully functional learning environment
KM Quest. Thirty-one students participated in the study. They were in
their fourth year of the study Information Services and Management in
Maastricht. This group was comparable to the sample in study I with respect
to important variables. In a pre-test post-test design the acquisition
of declarative and procedural knowledge was measured. Also a measure
of the self-reported use of metacognitive skills was employed. The results
indicate that students acquire both declarative and procedural knowledge
to the same extent. No relation with the a priori reported use of metacognitive
skills exists. The main conclusion of this study is that students
acquire knowledge from playing KM Quest.
5.1 Introduction
In this chapter the results of the second experiment in Maastricht are
reported. The main aim of this study is to measure learning effects for
students playing KM Quest.
The results of the pilot study indicate that this particular constructivist
gaming-simulation environment promotes transfer. However, the
results are based on a rather small sample of participants. The question
remains: to what extent are students who play KM Quest capable
1 This chapter was published in the form of a conference paper: L.H. Christoph, J.A.C.
Sandberg and B.J. Wielinga (2004). Measuring learning effects of a gaming-simulation environment
for the domain of Knowledge Management. Proceedings of IADIS Cognition and
Exploratory Learning in Digital Age (CELDA). Lisbon, Portugal, pages 265–272.
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