Browsing by Author "Rojas, Matias"

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    Assessing collaborative problem-solving skills among elementary school students
    (PALGRAVE, 2021) Rojas, Matias; Nussbaum, Miguel; Chiuminatto Munoz Pablo Andres; Guerrero, Orlando; Greiff, Samuel; Krieger, Florian; Westhuizen, Lindie Van Der
    As 21st century skills have become increasingly important, Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) is now considered essential in almost all areas of life. Different theoretical frameworks and assessment instruments have emerged for measuring this skill. However, more applied studies on its implementation and evaluation in real-life educational settings are required. In this sense, pre-post experimental designs are essential for identifying new methods for developing collaborative problem-solving skills. To do so, equivalent tests are needed to facilitate consistent score interpretations and reduce the practice effect. In the present study, a Design-Based Research approach is used to design and validate an assessment tool with two equivalent forms based on a framework proposed by the OECD and applied to a collaborative activity. A total of 719 students aged between 10 and 13 years old participated in the different stages of the study. The results show that the proposed instrument effectively measures the problem-solving dimension of collaborative problem-solving skills among students of this age. Moreover, the results from the test were equivalent for both forms and across genders. Finally, there were no significant differences when assessing collaborative problem-solving in human-human groups versus human-agent groups using the proposed instrument. For future work, we recommend including other data sources than just text-based conversations. This would allow us to capture the rich social interactions present in this type of activity. Future work should also consider exploring the extent to which skills could be trained. This could be done in an experimental design assessed using the equivalent forms of the proposed instrument as a pre- and post-test. Doing so would provide a more accurate measure of students' collaborative skills.
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    Integrating a collaboration script and group awareness to support group regulation and emotions towards collaborative problem solving
    (Taylor and Francis, 2022) Rojas, Matias; Nussbaum, Miguel; Guerrero, Orlando; Chiuminatto Munoz Pablo Andres; Greiff, Samuel; Del Rio, Rodrigo; Alvares, Danilo
    The research landscape displays increasing awareness of the important role of self-regulation and emotions in the process of acquiring Collaborative Problem-Solving skills (CPS), which are considered essential in almost all areas of life. However, there is still a dearth of research on developing CPS skills among elementary-school students. Our research therefore looks at how elementary school students' regulation skills and emotions are supported by a collaborative game using a collaboration script to scaffold group awareness. An intervention was carried out with a sample of 223 students aged between 10 and 13. The experimental group worked collaboratively in sub-groups, scaffolded by the game, while the control group attended regular lessons. The students' attitudes towards collaboration were evaluated before and after the intervention. In addition to this, a focus group was held a week after the intervention, which involved 32 students from both groups. The quantitative analysis revealed that attitudes towards collaboration improved significantly among students in the experimental group. This difference can be explained by a combination of the intervention, the students' initial attitudes, and their respective GPAs. The qualitative analysis provided evidence of the regulation processes and emotions that emerge when combining a collaboration script with group awareness tools during CPS activities. Furthermore, the results highlighted the relationship between these tools and positive emotions (i.e., satisfaction), co-regulation, and shared regulation. These findings suggest that there is a relationship between the co-regulation process required by the game and a shift in emotions from frustration to satisfaction. This work provides evidence of how scaffolding group awareness using a collaboration script supports regulation skills and emotions, thus promoting the development of Collaborative Problem-Solving skills.
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    The relationship between creativity and language as measured by linguistic maturity and text production
    (2024) Guentulle, Victoria; Nussbaum, Miguel; Castillo, Franco; Chiuminatto, Pablo; Spector, Jonathan Michael; Rojas, Matias
    Creativity is the result of several converging elements, including cultural, environmental, and social factors. The context in which people live their lives not only affects their creativity; it also affects how they acquire and use language. This study shows how a person's context and linguistic development, as measured by linguistic maturity, affects their creativity. 249 students aged between 13 and 15, participated in the study by completing an online test measuring their linguistic maturity and creativity. This study used Guilford's (1967) Alternative Uses Test following the Consensual Assessment Technique. Regression models revealed a positive and significant influences of linguistic maturity on creativity. Greater semantic memory networks allow for more efficient searches, thus enabling creativity. Therefore, greater semantic richness leads to greater linguistic maturity, resulting in increased creativity. Our findings confirm a relationship between language skills and creativity (i.e., linguistic maturity and text production) at a deeper level than previously studied. This is relevant for both curriculum development and instructional design. In this sense, tools as ChatGPT that produce text from millions of documents, push the student to be mediator of all this linguistic richness. Furthermore, measuring linguistic maturity and text production provides another means to measure creativity, transcendent, considering that having proper approaches to measure creativity is a challenge.
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    Using Automated Planning to Provide Feedback during Collaborative Problem-Solving
    (2023) Rojas, Matias; Saez, Cristian; Baier, Jorge; Nussbaum, Miguel; Guerrero, Orlando; Rodriguez, Maria Fernanda
    Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills (CPS) have become increasingly important. Research into the development of CPS is still scarce, but there are several approaches that may be useful for its development. Specifically, providing feedback in collaborative contexts is key. In this paper, we study and develop a feedback system that uses Automated Planning techniques to promote communication among students. Our system is designed to be used in a real-world educational setting, considering the underpinning theory of when and how to give feedback. The system's frontend is a video game, which presents tasks that can only be solved when students collaborate. In the backend, the system computes the solution to the task in a partial-order plan using an automated planning engine. While it monitors the plan and provides feedback to students. We describe an experimental study involving 42 students aged between 10 and 13, in which we explore the effectiveness of the feedback that was given. We show that the feedback allowed the students to perform better in the game, improve their communication, and develop their collaborative problem-solving skills. We also describe a novel approach to monitoring multi-agent partial-order plans, specifically designed for plans with so-called independent chains, that is more efficient than previous approaches and therefore requires fewer computational resources in the classroom. This paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we propose a novel monitoring algorithm for partial-order plans that is better suited to educational settings. Second, we show that feedback extracted from a plan can promote reflection about collaborative problem-solving during a multi-agent activity.