List VOL.1NO.1 publication date:April 2014 Back Learning the Area of Parallelograms with Worked Examples: The Influence of Metacognitive Questions     Author:You-Jia Huang, Huei-Min Wu, Hui-Chuan Huang, Ning-Chun Tan, Shyh-Chii Tzeng, Chien-Ming Cheng Research Article Download The purpose of this study was to examine whether including metacognitive questions in worked examples would influence learners of different abilities differently in terms of test performance, learning time, and cognitive load. A 2 (types of worked examples: with or without metacognitive questions) × 2 (ability: high and low) experimental study was conducted. The material was multimedia worked examples for learning the areas of parallelograms. The participants were 86 fifth graders from an elementary school. They were divided into high and low ability groups based on their mid-term exam and randomly assigned to one of the experimental groups. The results showed that the inclusion of metacognitive questions increased the overall learning time, but it was mainly due to the system difference of the instructional material. Inserting metacognitive questions in the worked examples did not influence high ability students’ perception of cognitive load and test performance; however, it negatively influenced their perception of confidence and willingness to participate in the activity. For the low ability students, the inclusion of metacognitive questions significantly influenced their perception of cognitive load. They needed to invest more time and effort to learn. These effort unfortunately did not enhance their test performance and negatively influenced their confidence and willingness to participate in the learning activity. Keywords: parallelogram, area, cognitive load, metacognitive question Analyzing College Students’ Geometric Investigation within the Dynamic Geometry Environment