Chair: MORROW, JOHN E.
DAI-A 58/10, p. 3896, Apr 1998

This study examined the effects of the knowledge and use of an information-processing model as a metacognitive strategy for adults in a military training environment. Adult learners in a military training environment cannot always be assured of receiving instruction which has been developed following reliable instructional design principles or which employs cognitive science methodologies. This is particularly true in a computer-based training environment where poor instructional materials may not be compensated by a live instructor. In this case, it is the learner who must exercise compensatory methods to ensure learning performance. Enabling the military learner to feel confident that he or she can generate the necessary compatible compensatory strategies in the computer-based training environment to achieve learning success might be the key to motivating military learners to make use of this training medium. Locus of control (LOC), a bipolar psychological construct, refers to an individual's beliefs about the control he or she has over his or her life. Control may be internal, in which the person feels personally responsible, or external, in which outside forces exert control (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993). In the learning environment, these two points of view would see success and achievement as direct results of personal effort (the internal) or the instructor or instruction (the external). It was hypothesized, that if military learners were given a metacognitive strategy which improved their performance in one learning situation then possibly their sense of successful personal control would extend to future computer-based training situations. A convenience sample (n = 194) of U.S. Navy junior enlisted personnel from the Naval Aviation Technical Training Center (NATTC), Pensacola, FL, participated in the study. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of two equal groups. Treatment group subjects completed the presence of strategy lesson: The Information-processing Model: How you process, store, and recall information. To control for time, the control group completed the microbiology lesson from Basic and Refresher Food Service Sanitation. Both groups completed the foodborne illness lesson from the Food Service course. Subjects were tested immediately following the lessons. Performance scores between the two groups were analyzed using the general linear model. It was hypothesized that subjects receiving the metacognitive strategy would have higher performance scores than the control group. The study also examined LOC and its association with performance as well as interaction between the variables. Results indicated no significant difference in the performance scores nor was there any predictive association between LOC and performance. Finally, no interaction was found between strategy training and locus of control.