Abstract
Learners continuously shape and reshape their knowledge base, which allows them to generalize their learning to novel contexts and solve novel problems. Irrespective of the academic domain, it is important to provide students with a variety of opportunities to apply their learning across multiple contexts, thus increasing self-awareness and autonomy, and enhancing transfer. Based on one of its broader definitions, transfer is “a term that describes a situation where information learned at one point in time influences performance on information encountered at a later point in time. (Royer, Mestre, & Dufresne, 2005, p. vii). Understanding the cognitive processes underlying transfer and developing instructional strategies that could be used to enhance transfer across various contexts is an important, yet challenging educational issue. This proposal discusses the design features of a Spatial Navigation Transfer (SNT) game, which was developed by the researchers of this study to examine problem solving and transfer of learning in virtual environments. The SNT game was piloted with six graduate students at a private, four-year university located in the northeast of the US. Preliminary findings from the pilot study will be shared, and implications for instruction and instructional design for enhancing transfer of problem solving skills within higher education will be discussed.
Author Information
Tamara Galoyan, Drexel University, United States
Hovak Abrahamian, American University of Armenia, Armenia
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