Leveraging Data To Assess The Need To Provide Instructional Scaffolding To Support A Student’s Ability To Grasp Concepts

All students are different. Not only do they have different learning goals, but the differences can also be found in their strengths and weaknesses. The student’s individual requirements are needed to be catered to for effective learning. It requires personalised intervention and support that is specifically tailored to each student. In a nutshell, it requires the learning process to be student-centric rather than teacher-centric. This particular approach of providing support to the learner by an instructor is called Instructional Scaffolding.

Instructional Scaffolding is a method through which a teacher supports students to improve learning and aid in the mastery of tasks. The teacher does this by building students’ expertise and knowledge as the students learn new skills. When the students start showing improvements in the given tasks, the supports are gradually removed. This teaching style accommodates the incentive for students to take a more influential role in their learning. In a scaffolded learning atmosphere, students are free to ask questions, give feedback, and assist their peers in learning new material. One of the main advantages of scaffolded learning is that it caters to a supportive learning condition. The need to execute a scaffold will occur when the teacher recognises that the student is unable to understand a particular concept.

Students with learning limitations are often not actively involved in the learning process when they are taught a new skill. Instead, they only go through the motions of the task. This phenomenon is observed because students with learning limitations generally don’t understand the underlying concepts they should attend to during each step. To overcome such situations, teachers should monitor their students closely. An independent demonstration from the students on their particular task will help mentors determine whether or not the students are learning.

Instructional Scaffolding has three essential features that facilitate effective learning:

1. There should be collaborative interactions between the teacher and the learner. These interactions help the teacher better understand the student and their standing in terms of their knowledge and skills.
2. Learning should occur in the Zone of Proximal Development of the student, where a thorough understanding of the student’s current level of knowledge is required. Based on the student’s current cognitive, emotional, and volitional state, the system can help the student work to a certain extent beyond the current level.
3. Once the student starts working as per the interventions and recommendations of the expert, they start making improvements and become proficient. Then, the support is gradually removed so that the learner can manage on their own. 

For scaffolding to be efficient, teachers should be aware of the following:

1. Learning Task Selection: The task should guarantee that learners use their developing skills. The learning task should also be engaging and exciting to keep students occupied. The task should never be too easy nor too difficult for the student.
2. Error Anticipation: After choosing the task, the teacher needs to anticipate errors the students are likely to commit when working on the task. Anticipation of errors enables the scaffolder to guide the students away from ineffective directions properly.
3. Scaffolds Application During the Learning Task: Scaffolds could be organised in two separate ways. It can be “simple skill acquisition” or “generative and dynamic”.
4. Emotional Issues Consideration: Scaffolding is not limited to a cognitive skill and can also support emotional responses. For example, during a particular task, the scaffolder might need to manage and control for frustration and loss of interest that the learner could experience. Encouragement is also a critical scaffolding component.

Embibe Product/Features: Personalised Achievement Journey, Next Question Engine

Through Embibe’s ‘Personalised Achievement Journey’, personalised education is provided to each student, depending on their learning curves. Different numbers of questions of suitable difficulty levels are provided to different students depending on their specific learning needs. Students can also create their own test for any chapter and at any time, allowing them to compare their strengths on each chapter at their own pace. Our ‘Solve with Us’ feature provides hints at the question level, and micro-hints at step level to help students solve questions. In case students are still not able to solve it, detailed solutions are provided for every question; it’s like having a personal teacher, a mentor at disposal anytime and anywhere.

Embibe also provides scaffolding to students with ‘Live Chat Support’ active 24/7 where students can post their academic queries. Experts at Embibe usually clear the doubts through chat within minutes. At Embibe, our goal is to make the world a better place through education and our support team does exactly that by working hard to resolve all student queries.