The expertise reversal effect and worked examples in tutored problem solving

Abstract

Prior research has shown that tutored problem solving with intelligent software tutors is an effective instructional method, and that worked examples are an effective complement to this kind of tutored problem solving. The work on the expertise reversal effect suggests that it is desirable to tailor the fading of worked examples to individual students' growing expertise levels. One lab and one classroom experiment were conducted to investigate whether adaptively fading worked examples in a tutored problem-solving environment can lead to higher learning gains. Both studies compared a standard Cognitive Tutor with two example-enhanced versions, in which the fading of worked examples occurred either in a fixed manner or in a manner adaptive to individual students' understanding of the examples. Both experiments provide evidence of improved learning results from adaptive fading over fixed fading over problem solving. We discuss how to further optimize the fading procedure matching each individual student's changing knowledge level.

Accounting for Beneficial Effects of Worked Examples in Tutored Problem Solving

“…The results of the adaptive fading condition in the two geometry studies by Salden et al (2010) point to a theoretically important difference between a focus on learning problemlevel schemas in many CLT studies, which does not seem to explain the benefit of steplevel adaptive fading, and a focus on step-level learning of finer-grained knowledge components in tutored problem solving. Lastly, not only do these findings extend our previous work, they also fit rather well with the future direction of CLT as suggested by van Merriënboer and Sweller (2005) in terms of adaptive e-Learning (see also Kalyuga and Sweller 2005).…”

“…Inspired in part by this dilemma, several recent studies have embedded worked examples in a variety of Cognitive Tutors and investigated whether the examples still had beneficial effects over the tougher tutored control condition (e.g., Anthony 2008;McLaren et al 2008;Salden et al 2010;Schwonke et al 2009). …”

“…Recently, eight studies have compared a regular Cognitive Tutor with an example-enriched Tutor in the domains of geometry (Salden et al 2010;Schwonke et al 2009), chemistry (McLaren et al 2008, and algebra (Anthony 2008). These studies tested the hypothesis that replacing a substantial number of tutored problems with worked examples would further enhance student learning by reducing instructional time and/or increasing student outcomes in terms of retention and transfer performance.…”

“…The second study also found better transfer to conceptually oriented problems from the example-enriched tutor than from tutored problem solving alone. Salden et al (2010) conducted two follow-up studies, one lab study and one classroom study, using the Geometry Cognitive Tutor (Schwonke et al 2009) in which they compared the same tutored problem-solving and fixed-fading conditions with respect to learning outcomes on procedural and conceptual transfer tests as well as on a long-term retention test. Similar to the first geometry study, no significant differences were found on either transfer test.…”

“…The example-enriched Tutors showed beneficial learning outcomes for long-term retention in three (Anthony 2008;Salden et al 2010) out of three studies, with five studies not including long-term retention. The example-enriched Tutors showed benefits for conceptual transfer in one (Schwonke et al 2009) out of four studies with four studies not including conceptual transfer.…”