The effects of reflective prompts in web-based educational environment on students' metacognitive skills, academic success, and efficiency

The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of reflective prompts in web-based educational environments on students? metacognitive skills, academic success, and efficiency. Pretest?posttest control group design was employed throughout the study. The independent variable of the study is the web-based learning environment. This variable has two sub-levels; the presence of reflective prompts and the absence thereof. The dependent variables in the study are the metacognitive skills, academic success, and the efficiency of students.The study is conducted with participation from 63 sophomore year students attending the Department of Turkish Language Teaching, Gazi University, during the 2007-2008 Spring Semester, enrolled in the Computer II class. The students are randomly assigned to control and experiment groups. A task-based web environment is developed as the learning material. In the learning environment used by experiment group, there are reflective prompts to orient students plan how to execute the task and evaluate their learning process after completing the task.According to the findings of the covariance analysis (ANCOVA), a significant difference determined between the metacognitive skill scores of the students in experiment group and the students in control group [F(1-60)=5.88. p<.05]. The single-factor variance analysis (ANOVA) results point to the lack of a significant difference between the general academic success scores of students in control and experiment group [F(1-61)=.569. p>.05]. The results of a multi-variable variance analysis (MANOVA) identify the lack of a significant difference between the efficiency scores for the four different tasks of students in two group.