The Effects of Decomposition Quality and Multiple Forms of Information on Novices’ Understanding of a Domain from a Conceptual Model

An Empirical Review of the Connection Between Model Viewer Characteristics and the Comprehension of Conceptual Process Models

“…Several authors suggested that the comprehension of a conceptual model can be considered as the outcome of a learning process that requires model viewers to actively organize and integrate the model information with their own knowledge and previous experience (Gemino and Wand 2003;Burton-Jones and Meso 2008;Mayer 2009). This conceptualization explicitly emphasizes the role of MVCs as one important factor for model comprehension.…”

“…First, several experiments in this area cover them as control variables, but not as independent variables in their own right. Second, experiments use different operationalizations of different aspects of viewer characteristics such as the years of modeling experience (Burton-Jones and Meso 2008) or the number of models created (Recker and Dreiling 2011), which makes the results difficult to compare. Third, experiments often involve specific cohorts of potentially limited variation in MVCs such as students, although it is not fully understood in how far they have model viewer characteristics that are similar or different to other cohorts.…”

Exploring cognitive style and task-specific preferences for process representations

“…For instance, Dumas et al [23] describe different reasons for process modeling as follows: "The first one is simply to understand the process and to share our understanding of the process […] a thorough understanding is the prerequisite to conduct process analysis, redesign or execution." This quote indicates that understanding typically is considered the basis and prerequisite for any subsequent model application tasks [24,25]. Task complexity is likely to increase for the other tasks.…”

“…We chose this test to be able to ascertain whether participants, in principle, had some level of experience with different types and formats of conceptual modeling grammars, because essential to our research was the study of different representation formats. This study focus prevented us from using traditional experience measures such as self-rated comparisons to expert users [24] or multiple-choice questions about the grammatical logic of any given model [25].…”

How collaborative technology supports cognitive processes in collaborative process modeling: A capabilities-gains-outcome model

“…However, our measurement and structural model analysis yielded significant results with appropriate goodness of fit values, suggesting the adequacy of our sample size for our analysis. Our sample was drawn from post-graduate student cohorts, which have been argued to be adequate proxies for novice analysts [9]. A field study of practitioners was not feasible in our case due to the unavailability of a large population of collaborative modeling technology users.…”