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Self-Diagnosis, Scaffolding and Transfer in a More Conventional Introductory Physics Problem

Previously we discussed how well students in an introductory physics course diagnosed their mistakes on a quiz problem with different levels of scaffolding support. In that case, the problem they self-diagnosed was unusually difficult. We also discussed issues related to transfer, particularly the fact that the transfer problem in the midterm that corresponded to the self-diagnosed problem was a far transfer problem. Here, we discuss a related intervention in which we repeated the study methodology with the same students in the same intervention groups, using a new quiz problem which was more typical for these students and a near transfer problem. We discuss how these changes affected students' ability to self-diagnose and transfer from the self-diagnosed quiz problem to a transfer problem on the midterm exam.