Investigating the role of socially mediated metacognition during collaborative troubleshooting of electric circuits

Developing students’ ability to troubleshoot is an important learning outcome for many undergraduate physics lab courses, especially electronics courses. In other work, metacognition has been identified as an important feature of troubleshooting. However, that work has focused primarily on individual students’ metacognitive processes or troubleshooting abilities. In contrast, electronics courses often require students to work in pairs, and hence students’ in-class experiences likely have significant social dimensions that are not well understood. In this work, we use an existing framework for socially mediated metacognition to analyze audiovisual data from think-aloud activities in which eight pairs of students from two institutions attempted to diagnose and repair a malfunctioning electric circuit. In doing so, we provide insight into some of the social metacognitive dynamics that arise during collaborative troubleshooting. We find that students engaged in socially mediated metacognition at multiple key transitions during the troubleshooting process. Reciprocated metacognitive dialogue arose when students were collectively strategizing about which measurements to perform, or reaching a shared understanding of the circuit’s behavior. Our research demonstrates the value of the framework of socially mediated metacognition in providing insight into the nature of collaborative student troubleshooting in the context of electronics. As such, this framework may be a useful resource for future efforts to examine and support the development of student troubleshooting skills in other upper-division laboratory courses.

Figure 1

(Left) Annotated schematic diagram for the inverting cascade amplifier, with design elements highlighted. Two stages were connected in series: the first stage, consisting of the leftmost op-amp and resistors $R_1$ and $R_2$, was a non-inverting amplifier with a gain of 2; the second stage, consisting of the rightmost op-amp and resistors $R_3$ and $R_4$, was an inverting amplifier with a gain of $-10$. The handout given to students did not include labels for stages or faults. (Right) Annotated photograph of the physical circuit. The three shown power rails were connected to $\pm 15\mathrm{V}$ and ground; wires connecting the circuit to power rails are not labeled. The leftmost LF365 op-amp is part of stage 1, and the rightmost is part of stage 2.

Figure 2

Representation of the ordering and typical duration of episodes selected for analysis. In all interviews, episodes occurred in the order shown here. In half the interviews, either the split-half episode or the replacement decision episode was missing; in these cases, the other three episodes still occurred in the order shown. Across all interviews, all four episodes together accounted for about 20% of the total time spent troubleshooting during the interviews. On average, initial strategizing episodes had the shortest duration. Students typically spent 20 to 45 min troubleshooting the circuit.