The Reflection Assistant: Investigating the Effects of Reflective Activities in Problem Solving Environments

This paper presents theoretical issues about the role of metacognition in learning, as well as the architecture and design of a learning system dedicated to monitoring and helping students to use their metacognitive skills. This system is called the Reflection Assistant and is supposed to be used together with problem solving or case−based learning systems. Thus, through interactions with the Reflection Assistant during problem solving activities, students can also improve their metacognitive skills (such as planning, self−monitoring and assessing), as well as their knowledge in the specific domain. The purpose of this research is to investigate better means to increase metacognitive knowledge, including awareness on the learning process and capacity of transferring skills to new learning situations. The motivation for this research is that it is necessary to focus as much on the metacognitive processes of problem solving as on the cognitive ones to develop good problem solvers.