Bridging the Gap: Real-Time Knowledge Remediation

Decoding Scaffolding:

Scaffolding in education is a teaching strategy where educators gradually reduce their support as students gain proficiency and progress in their learning journey. This support can encompass various elements such as content, processes, and learning strategies. Effective scaffolding necessitates careful planning, initial assessment of students’ prior knowledge, and ongoing monitoring of their progress to decide when to adjust or remove certain supports. As students progress, they undertake more complex tasks that may necessitate new forms of support, which eventually fade as they develop greater proficiency. The main goals of scaffolding are to boost student proficiency and cultivate their growth as self-regulated learners. This is achieved by providing an appropriate level of instructional support tailored to student needs and the complexity of the learning context. As students evolve in their learning journey, scaffolding can be adjusted, reduced, or removed over time.

The ZPD:

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) represents the gap between students’ independent capabilities and what they can achieve with additional support. It symbolizes the additional space where students can learn, practice, and accomplish tasks beyond their independent abilities. Teaching below the ZPD involves students revisiting familiar knowledge and refining existing skills, resulting in minimal learning. On the other hand, teaching entirely unfamiliar concepts to students leads to frustration and limited learning. While the learning process may involve some confusion and initial setbacks, scaffolding is employed to minimize unnecessary challenges and ensure student success. Teaching within the ZPD enables students to meaningfully apply their prior knowledge, receiving guidance and practice to eventually achieve the course’s learning outcomes independently.

Benefits of Scaffolding:

Implementing scaffolding in a traditional online course demands additional effort from instructors, especially in an online environment. Despite the challenges, the benefits surpass the effort involved. Cho and Cho (2016) highlight that some students may be reluctant to seek help from instructors, potentially avoiding the essential support needed for their success. Incorporating scaffolding into the course design directly addresses this issue by embedding support within the course content. Benefits for students from instructional scaffolding include being challenged through deep learning, fostering better learning habits, increasing the likelihood of success, receiving personalized instruction, and creating opportunities for peer learning. Additionally, scaffolding streamlines student support, allowing them to explore solutions independently, enabling instructors to focus on tasks such as grading, responding to forum posts, and addressing emerging questions.

In preparing students for the challenges of the 21st century, numerous research studies advocate a shift from a focus on declarative knowledge to critical thinking. Scaffolding plays a crucial role in building students’ critical thinking abilities by supporting them as they engage in complex processes rather than teaching required skills didactically before engaging in these processes.

Implementation on the edaptAI Platform:

edaptAI prioritizes mastery learning at the heart of its pedagogy, emphasizing the importance of students achieving a high level of proficiency in a subject before advancing to more complex material. Progression is dependent on demonstrating a thorough understanding of the current material. edaptAI’s innovative “Recursive Bi-Directional Scaffolding” efficiently addresses knowledge gaps, offering real-time instructional support for both current and prerequisite learning concepts. Within this scaffolding process, students navigate through prerequisite concepts, mastering them before returning to the original concept for a secondary attempt at mastery. According to the 2022 Efficacy Report, edaptAI particularly benefits struggling students, with those initially achieving an average of 62% before remediation experiencing an impressive average growth of 31 points, reaching 93% after remediation.