Effects of process-oriented worked examples on troubleshooting transfer performance

Abstract

In the domain of electrical circuits troubleshooting, a full factorial experiment investigated the hypotheses that a) studying worked examples would lead to better transfer performance than solving conventional problems, with less investment of time and mental effort during training and test, and b) adding process information to worked examples would increase investment of effort during training and enhance transfer performance; whereas adding it to conventional problems would increase investment of effort, but would not positively affect transfer performance. The first hypothesis was largely confirmed by the data; the second was not: adding process information indeed resulted in increased investment of effort during training, but not in higher transfer performance in combination with worked examples. Process-Oriented Worked Examples 3 Effects of Process-Oriented Worked Examples on Troubleshooting Transfer PerformanceTroubleshooting, that is, diagnosing and repairing faults in a technical system, constitutes an important part of most technical jobs. Fault diagnosis is considered a complex cognitive skill to carry out, and even more complex to acquire (Gott, Parker Hall, Pokorny, Dibble, & Glaser, 1993;Schaafstal, Schraagen, & Van Berlo, 2000). This study addresses the question of how initial acquisition of this skill can be fostered by the design of effective troubleshooting instruction and, in particular, the support given to students during practice. Specially, the study investigates the effects on learning outcomes of support formats that are assumed to help students to use their cognitive resources more effectively.According to Cognitive Load Theory (CLT;Sweller, 1988;Sweller, Van Merriënboer, & Paas, 1998;Van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2005) instructional materials draw on students' cognitive resources in three ways, related to the intrinsic, extraneous and germane cognitive load they impose. Intrinsic cognitive load is imposed by the complexity of the instructional task and depends on the number of interacting elements that have to be related, controlled, and kept active in working memory during learning activities. By nature, troubleshooting tasks are complex and require processing of numerous information elements. For example, in troubleshooting a simple electrical DC circuit, specific knowledge of the function of its components (e.g., voltage sources, resistors) and general knowledge about the relation between voltage, current and resistance (Ohm's law) and about the conservation of energy and charge (Kirchoff's laws) is needed to be able to determine how the circuit should function. Knowledge about how to use different meters is required to be able to measure the voltage, current and resistance at different points in the circuit. The troubleshooter has to compare those measurements to his/her own calculations of optimal functioning. Furthermore, s/he needs to relate the outcome of that comparison to knowledge about how certain symptoms (e.g., no current in the entire circuit) relate to certain Proc...

Example-Based Learning: Integrating Cognitive and Social-Cognitive Research Perspectives

“…In line with the finding that imitation does not seem to be necessary for learning, worked examples research has demonstrated that studying examples only is also more effective for learning than engaging in problem solving only (Nievelstein et al 2010;Van Gerven et al 2002;Van Gog et al 2006). In fact, it can be questioned whether the opportunity to practice indeed has added value for learning: A recent study found that both examples only and example-problem pairs were more effective than problem solving and problem-example pairs, and there was no significant difference between examples only and example-problem pairs .…”

“…Recent studies have shown, however, that adding worked examples to tutored problem-solving environments (worked examples: Schwonke et al 2009;videobased modeling examples: McLaren et al 2008) or realistic mathematics methods (Van Loon-Hillen et al in press) can also enhance learning, reduce acquisition time, or both. In addition, worked examples have been found to be more effective for learning than discovery learning (Tuovinen and Sweller 1999) and problem solving with a more general level of guidance provided by process steps (i.e., a description of the steps to be taken, but the steps are to be worked out by the learner; Nievelstein et al 2010;Van Gog et al 2006).…”

“…The majority of research on worked examples has been conducted using highly structured cognitive tasks in domains such as algebra (e.g., Carroll 1994;Cooper and Sweller 1987;Mwangi and Sweller 1998;Sweller and Cooper 1985), statistics (e.g., Paas 1992;Quilici and Mayer 1996), geometry (e.g., Catrambone 1995Catrambone , 1996Paas and Van Merriënboer 1994;Schwonke et al 2009;Tarmizi and Sweller 1988), or physics (e.g., Kalyuga et al 2001;Reisslein et al 2006;Van Gog et al 2006Ward and Sweller 1990). However, several recent studies have shown that worked examples can also be effective with less structured cognitive tasks such as learning how to apply an instructional design model (Hoogveld et al 2005), learning argumentation skills (Schworm and Renkl 2007), learning to construct concept maps ), learning to recognize designer styles (Rourke and Sweller 2009), or learning to reason about legal cases (Nievelstein et al 2010).…”

“…Because studying worked examples tends to reduce cognitive load compared to problem solving (e.g., Nievelstein et al 2010;Paas 1992;Paas and Van Merriënboer 1994;Van Gog et al 2006), it may be even more effective for learners who have lower working memory capacity. Lower working memory capacity has been associated with certain learning disabilities and may also occur due to effects of aging.…”

When Is It Best to Learn with All Worked Examples?

“…Given our own prior results [8], which showed better learning efficiency in alternating examples/tutored problems versus all tutored problem solving, as well as the preponderance of evidence supporting the advantages of the two-step learning process [3,4,5,6], the first part of this hypothesis (i.e., alternating examples/tutored problems > all tutored problems) was already well supported. Despite some (but limited) evidence that all examples can be more effective for learning and more efficient in mental effort, at least as compared to all untutored problem solving [9,10], our theory was that all examples might be faster than examples/tutored problems but likely at the expense of careful study and robust learning, thus hurting both learning outcome and efficiency, suggesting the second part of our hypothesis (i.e., alternating examples/tutored problems > all worked examples). On the other hand, an "in press" study, one that occurred more-or-less concurrently to ours (yet after our hypothesis was formulated), casts doubt on the notion that an alternating condition is better than all examples, at least with respect to regular, non-tutored problem solving.…”