Scaffolding refers to moving a student through prerequisite concepts when they are struggling with a given concept. By scaffolding, a student is automatically visiting prerequisite concepts to relearn and refresh their understanding of information, ideas, and skills that provide the foundation for material in the current concept. Scaffolding is a tool used as part of the automatic remediation process.
The Key Aspects of Scaffolding
Scaffolding in edapt is both recursive and bi-directional.
Recursive: If a student is struggling in a prerequisite concept and that prerequisite has prerequisites, then the student is scaffolded down "recursively" until they are no longer struggling with the material or there are no more prerequisite concepts.
Bi-Directional: If a student is struggling in a concept, they will be scaffolded down to a prerequisite or prerequisites recursively (this is traversing down). As soon as the student completes the independent prerequisite concepts (leaf node concepts among the scaffolded prerequisites), then edapt automatically returns the student to the parent concepts of the prerequisites the student completed (this is traversing up) before eventually returning the student to the original concept.
Examples:
One Level Scaffolding: If a student is struggling in concept C100, the student will be scaffolded to its prerequisite concept C090. The student will need to complete C090 before they retry the original concept C100. When the original concept C100 is attempted again, the student will start fresh with that concept to demonstrate mastery.
Multi Level Scaffolding: If a student is struggling in concept C100, the student will be scaffolded to its prerequisite concept C090. If the student continues to struggle, the student will be scaffolded again to concept C080. The student will need to complete concept C080 and then retry concept C090 before they can retry the original concept C100 to demonstrate mastery.
To learn more about the remediation process, click here. To learn more about scaffolding from the Faculty perspective, click here. To learn more about scaffolding from the Student perspective, click here.
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