Process data are becoming more and more popular in education research. In the field of computer-based assessments of collaborative problem solving (ColPS), process data have been used to identify students' test-taking strategies while working on the assessment, and such data can be used to complement data collected on accuracy and overall…

In large-scale assessments, performance differences across different groups are regularly found. These group differences (e.g., gender differences) are often relevant for educational policy decisions and measures. However, the formation of these group differences usually remains unclear. We propose an approach for investigating this formation by…

Effective collaborative problem solving comprises cognitive dimensions, in which men tend to outperform women, and social dimensions in which women tend to outperform men. We extend research on between-country differences in gender gaps by considering collaborative problem solving and its association with two indicators of societal-level gender…

In this explorative study, we investigate how sequences of behaviour are related to success or failure in complex problem-solving (CPS). To this end, we analysed log data from two different tasks of the problem-solving assessment of the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 study (n = 30,098 students). We first coded every…

Complexity is one of the major demands of adolescents' future life as adults. To investigate adolescents' competence development in applying problem-solving strategies in complex environments, we conducted a 2-wave longitudinal study in a sample of Finnish adolescents (11-17 years old; N = 1,959 at Time 1 and N = 1,690 at Time 2, 3 years later).…

A previous study found that task shifting and fluid intelligence, but not working memory capacity (WMC) and prior knowledge, influenced the worked example effect (Schwaighofer, Bühner, & Fischer, 2016). To increase confidence in these findings, we report a preregistered extended replication study of Schwaighofer et al.'s investigation.…

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is an essential 21st century skill at the intersection of social collaboration and cognitive problem solving, and is increasingly integrated in educational programs, such as the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). As research has identified the impact of the Big Five personality…

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) assessment is a new academic research field with a number of educational implications. In 2015, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessed CPS with a computer-simulated human-agent (H-A) approach that claimed to measure 12 individual CPS skills for the first time. After reviewing the…

Successful completion of a university degree is a complex matter. Based on considerations regarding the demands of acquiring a university degree, the aim of this paper was to investigate the utility of complex problem-solving (CPS) skills in the prediction of objective and subjective university success (SUS). The key finding of this study was that…

Complex Problem Solving (CPS) is seen as a cross-curricular 21st century skill that has attracted interest in large-scale-assessments. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012, CPS was assessed all over the world to gain information on students' skills to acquire and apply knowledge while dealing with nontransparent…

Education in the twenty-first century must prepare students to meet the challenges of a dynamic and interconnected world. However, assessment of students' skills tends to focus primarily on static tasks. Therefore, it is not known whether knowledge about successful strategies displayed on static tasks can be transferred to interactive and dynamic…

Transversal skills, such as complex problem solving (CPS) are viewed as central twenty-first-century skills. Recent empirical findings have already supported the importance of CPS for early academic advancement. We wanted to determine whether CPS could also contribute to the understanding of career advancement later in life. Towards this end, we…

This study examines the validity of the complex problem solving (CPS) test MicroDYN by investigating a) the relation between its dimensions--rule identification (exploration strategy), rule knowledge (acquired knowledge), rule application (control performance)--and working memory capacity (WMC), and b) whether CPS predicts school grades in…

Complex problem solving (CPS) as a cross-curricular competence has recently attracted more attention in educational psychology as indicated by its implementation in international educational large-scale assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment. However, research on the development of CPS is scarce, and the few…

This article addresses two unsolved measurement issues in dynamic problem solving (DPS) research: (a) unsystematic construction of DPS tests making a comparison of results obtained in different studies difficult and (b) use of time-intensive single tasks leading to severe reliability problems. To solve these issues, the MicroDYN approach is…