PAs in a multimedia module serve to

PAs in a multimedia module serve to enhance students’ metacognitive
awareness of what they know and what they should know for the topic being
studied. One strategy for providing metacognitive guidance involves
embedding support, or scaffolds for procedural, strategic, or metacognitive
control (Land, 2000). This guidance and support is provided by the PAs in the
module. The PAs in a multimedia module could remind students of some
related concepts learnt before in the previous sub unit so that students can
make connections between the concepts learnt and the new concepts. Besides
that, PAs could do revision with students in the early part of the new sub-unit
to ensure that students still remember the concepts learnt before. PAs could
make learners aware of the opportunities presented to them, provide advice
for the learners on the tools to be used, and explain the functionalities of the
tools in an open learning environment (Clarebout & Elen, 2007). For
instance, PAs remind students to click on certain icons in the multimedia
module to bring students to some important section in the module. Hence,
students will not miss out the important part in the module. Apart from that,
PAs that act as low-competency co-learners were found to be able to enhance
students’ self-efficacy, confidence, and motivation toward unfamiliar but