Adaptive Content and Process Scaffolding: A key to facilitating students’ self-regulated learning with hypermedia

In this mixed-method study, we converged product and process data to examine the effectiveness of three human scaffolding conditions in facilitating students’ learning about the circulatory system and the deployment of key self-regulatory processes during a 40-minute hypermedia learning task. Undergraduate students (N = 123) 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. The product data revealed that the students in the ACPS condition gained significantly more declarative knowledge than did those in the other two comparison conditions. In addition, ACPS was statistically significantly associated with qualitative shifts in the students’ mental models of the topic, whereas the other two conditions were not. The verbal protocol data revealed that students in the ACPS condition utilized only a few regulatory processes, engaged in help-seeking behavior, and relied on the tutor to regulate their learning. By contrast, the verbal protocol data indicated that learners in the APS condition regulated their learning by using several key monitoring activities and learning strategies, while those in the NS condition were less effective at regulating their learning and used fewer key self-regulatory processes during the activity. We propose several design principles for adaptive hypermedia learning environments based on these findings.