External Regulating Agents’ Adaptive Content and Process Scaffolding: The Key to Fostering Mental Model Development during Hypermedia Learning

We examined the effectiveness of different scaffolding interventions in facilitating adolescents’ shift to more sophisticated mental models as indicated by both performance and process data. Ninety-three (N = 93) adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three scaffolding conditions (adaptive content and process scaffolding [ACPS], adaptive process scaffolding [APS], and no scaffolding [NS]) and were trained to use a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system. Pretest, posttest, and verbal protocol data were collected. The performance data revealed that the students in the ACPS condition gained significantly more conceptual knowledge, as examined using a structural equation model, than did those in the other two comparison conditions. The verbal protocol data revealed that students in the ACPS condition used a significantly higher proportion of planning processes than students in the NS condition, and a significantly higher proportion of monitoring processes than students in the APS and NS condition. By contrast, students in the NS condition used a significantly higher proportion of handling task difficulty processes than students in the ACPS