Abstracts - Earli

different learner characteristics have to be included into a profound analysis of hypermedialearning in order to account for individual differences and in order to explain strategy selection. Inour study five different clusters of learners could be distinguished according to their characteristicswith regard to domain-specific prior knowledge, cognitive and meta-cognitive strategy use inmathematics, epistemological beliefs, attitudes towards mathematics, preferences for the amountof instruction, and general meta-cognitive activity. These groups of learners differed with regard tothe strategies used in an example-based hypermedia environment as well as with regard to theirresulting learning outcomes.The effectiveness of external regulating agents in facilitating students’ learning with hypermediaRoger Azevedo, University of Memphis, USAAmy Witherspoon, University of Memphis, USAJeffrey Greene, University of Maryland, USADaniel Moos, University of Maryland, USAOur presentation will focus on the series of studies examining the effectiveness of self-regulatedlearning (SRL) and externally regulated learning (ERL) on college students’ and adolescents’learning about a challenging science topic (i.e., the circulatory system) with hypermedia. In aseries of studies, students at different developmental levels and with little knowledge of the topicwere randomly assigned either to the SRL or ERL condition. Learners in the SRL conditionregulated their own learning, while learners in the ERL condition had access to a human tutor whofacilitated their self-regulated learning. Across studies, we converged product (pretest-posttestdeclarative knowledge and qualitative shifts in students’ mental models) with process (thinkaloud)data to examine the effectiveness of SRL and ERL about the circulatory system during a40-minute learning task. In general, analyses showed that students in the ERL condition learnedstatistically significantly more declarative knowledge and were also more likely to have shifted toa more sophisticated mental model of the topic than those in the SRL condition. The process datarevealed that all students in the ERL condition used significantly more metacognitive monitoringprocesses and learning strategies during the learning task. However, there were qualitativedifferences in the number and types of self-regulatory processes used between adolescents andcollege students and across experimental conditions.E 1229 August 2007 14:30 - 16:30Room: 0.100ASymposiumAdvances of research in help seekingChair: Frank Fischer, University of Munich, GermanyChair: Kati Makitalo-Siegl, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, GermanyOrganiser: Kati Makitalo-Siegl, University of Munich, GermanyOrganiser: Frank Fischer, University of Munich, GermanyDiscussant: Stuart Karabenick, University of Michigan, USAResearch on help seeking has shown that students seek help rarely when they need it and that thosewho need help are often the ones least likely to ask for it. Students, who do not seek help when it– 279 –