Learning From Examples: Fostering Self-Explanations in Computer-Based Learning Environments

“Also, the research literature on selfexplanations indicates that an active engagement of learners in the learning process fosters a better integration of new knowledge with prior knowledge and higher levels of transfer (Chi et al., 1994; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002; Roy & Chi, 2005).”

“Self-explanation has proven to be a successful approach to engaging in the active processing of learning material (Chi et al., 1989; Renkl, 1997; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002; Roy & Chi, 2005).”

“In recent years, several projects have been conducted in which self-explanations during the study of worked-out examples were fostered by computer-based prompting (see also Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“hinder learning but is inherent in worked examples [21].”

“Asking learners to explain to themselves aloud what they have understood from a learning task has proved to be an effective instructional method (Chi et al. 1989; Renkl 1997; Renkl and Atkinson 2002 ).”

“However, students often have difficulty processing the steps and creating explanations on their own, and need help understanding the concepts involved in solving the problem or example, and how the processes involved work ( Renkl and Atkinson, 2002”

“…Ward & Sweller, 1990), examples with instructional explanations (i.e., worked examples with conceptual explanations provided along with each step; Renkl, 2002), and erroneous examples (i.e., worked examples that incorporate at least one incorrect solution step; Booth, Lange, Koedinger, & Newton,…”

“Moreover, self-explaining forces learners to explicate their understanding, and to generate inferences, which might help them to monitor and revise their knowledge base (Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“Renkl and Atkinson (2002) explore a variety of ways in which problems and examples can be structured to indirectly encourage self-explanation.”

“…improve learning by highlighting the procedure used in examples (Atkinson and Derry 2000; Atkinson et al. 2003; Margulieux et al. 2016), providing organization for new information (Morrison et al. 2015), and inducing self-explanation (Catrambone 1998; Renkl and Atkinson 2002; Morrison et al. 2016).”

“…to novices all of the steps required for solving a problem rather than requiring them to solve the problems on their own N D, P Atkinson (2002), Renkl and Atkinson (2002), see Van Gog and Rummel (2010) for a review Faded examples/ completion problems As trainees develop expertise, begin to…”

“The amount of self-explanations a typical learner makes is low (Chi et al., 1994; Wylie & Chi, 2014), but explanations can also be prompted by the design of instructional materials (Catrambone, 1998; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“Worked-out examples can be considered to be another kind of interpretative support and have been shown to have positive effects on learning outcomes in numerous studies (e.g., Nerdel and Prechtl 2004; Renkl 2005; Renkl and Atkinson 2002).”

“This drawback has recently led to a line of work that revisits Soloway’s idea of teaching the underlying subgoals and task structure of programs [5, 6, 7, 11, 30, 36, 39].”

“These types of comparisons promote self-explanation (e.g. by prompting students to question why two groups of steps are both characterized by the same subgoal label; Bielaczyc, Pirolli, & Brown, 1995; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“In this respect the generation of self-explanations, in which learners try to explain the rationale of a problem solution to themselves, ha proven to be an effective instructional method (Chi et al., 1989; Renkl, 1997; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002; Roy & Chi, 2005).”

“Their attention might be diverted away from the relevant information or focused on less important elements in the example, with the risk of a decreased learning effect (Renkl, 1999; Stark, Mandl, Gruber, & Renkl, 2002).”

“However, some cognitive strategies serving as instructional aids may be needed to support learning with visualizations (Mayer et al., 2005; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“By helping learners to focus on structural features of worked examples, subgoal labels are believed to reduce the extraneous cognitive load that is inherent in worked examples due to problem-specific details and can hinder learning (Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“However, studying examples can give learners an illusion of understanding (Baars et al., 2016; Baars, van Gog, de Bruin, & Paas, 2014; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“Might such benefits extend to comparing a student’s solution to that of the instructor? Another approach might be to provide an explanation of the instructor’s solution, writing out elaborations of the concepts and terms, and how they function and relate to each other, as in a worked-out example [20].”

“By helping learners organize information and focus on structural features of worked examples, subgoal labels are believed to reduce the extraneous cognitive load that can hinder learning but is inherent in worked examples [32].”

“Worked examples both instruct and help to foster self-explanation [13].”

“Self-explanation activities are more common in non-game digital learning technology than in games (Bisra et al., 2018; McLaren et al., 2008; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002; Roy & Chi, 2005), but some evidence suggests that incorporating self-explanation in games may yield similar benefits.”

“Pedagogically, worked-examples both instruct and help to foster self-explanation [10].”

“Students are asked to study the examples and fill in the gaps by generating the corresponding solution entries (Renkl and Atkinson 2002; Schwonke et al.”

“This design feature is also adapted from previous work, which shows that prompting students to selfexplain after viewing worked examples can improve their learning [44], [46].”

“Because learners are more focused on the structural features of the worked example allowing more effective organization of the information, subgoal labels may reduce the extraneous cognitive load that can hinder learning but is inherent in worked examples (Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“As a knowledge-building activity (Chi, 2000), students' self-explaining starts from a worked example (i.e., an expert's solution to a problem) and should go beyond the provided information to create these explanations (Chi et al., 1989; Fonseca & Chi, 2011; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“D is co ve ry Solution-based learning [6] Observational learning Step-by-step instructions”

“After all, a plethora of research brought out example-based training interventions potentials, especially when looking for short-term learning environments to acquire initial knowledge and skills (Hoogerheide & Roelle, 2020; Renkl, 2021; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002).”

“Therefore, the learning effect was highly associated with how well students explained [7].”

“In numerous studies, worked-out examples show positive effects on knowledge acquisition (e.g., [62–67]), especially for novice learners.”

“For instance, research has shown that training aimed at supporting elaboration during self-explanation (Stark et al., 2002), as well as the use of prompts requiring learners to respond before advancing to the next step (Renkl & Atkinson, 2002), can significantly enhance learning outcomes.”

“It has mainly been applied in well-structured domains (a comprehensive review on the subject is provided by Atkinson et al., 2000; q.v. Hilbert & Renkl, 2008; Reimann, 1997; Renkl, 2001a; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002; Stark, 1999; 2000; 2001 for further results).”

“This includes solution-based learning; [31] observational learning; step-by-step instructions and tasks; video”

“In addition, video-conferencing systems allow transmitting interaction and different experiences between different educational settings with the help of rich communication tools (Motamedi, 2001; Renkl & Atkinson, 2002;Greenberg & Nilssen, 2005).”