  "Self-diagnosis tasks" aim at fostering diagnostic behavior by explicitly
requiring students to present diagnosis as part of the activity of reviewing
their problem solutions. The recitation classes in an introductory physics
class (~200 students) were split into a control group and three experimental
groups in which different levels of guidance was provided for performing the
self-diagnosis activities. We have been a) investigating how students in each
group performed on subsequent near and far transfer questions given as part of
the exams; and b) comparing student's initial scores on their quizzes with
their performance on the exams, as well as comparing student's self-diagnosis
scores with their performance on the exams. We discuss some hypotheses about
the students' ability to self-diagnose with different levels of scaffolding
support and emphasize the importance of teaching students how to diagnosis
their own mistakes. Our findings suggest that struggling with minimal support
during in-class self-diagnosis can trigger out-of-class self-diagnosis.
Students therefore may be motivated to make sense of the problem they may have
not been able to self diagnose, whether independently or in a collaborative
effort.
