The impact of on‐demand metacognitive help on effortful behaviour: A longitudinal study using task‐related visual analytics

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigates the differences in learners' effortful behaviour over time due to receiving metacognitive help—in the form of on‐demand task‐related visual analytics. Specifically, learners' interactions (N = 67) with the tasks were tracked during four self‐assessment activities, conducted at four discrete points in time, over a period of 8 weeks. The considered and coded time points were: (a) prior to providing the metacognitive help; (b) while the task‐related visual analytics were available (treatment); (c) after the removal of the treatment; and (d) while the option to receive metacognitive help was available again. To measure learners' effortful behaviour across the self‐assessment activities, this study utilized learners' response‐times to correctly/wrongly complete the tasks and on‐task effort expenditure. The panel data analysis shown that the usage of metacognitive help caused statistically significant changes in learners' effortful behaviour, mostly in the third and fourth phase. Statistically significant changes were detected also in the usage of metacognitive help. These results provide empirical evidence on the benefits of task‐related visual analytics to support learners' on‐task engagement, and suggest relevant cues on how metacognitive help could be designed and prompted by focusing on the “task”, instead of the “self”.