Education Commons^™

Reducing Withdrawal And Failure Rates In Introductory Programming With Subgoal Labeled Worked Examples, Lauren Margulieux, Briana B. Morrison, Adrienne Decker

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Programming a computer is an increasingly valuable skill, but dropout and failure rates in introductory programming courses are regularly as high as 50%. Like many fields, programming requires students to learn complex problem-solving procedures from instructors who tend to have tacit knowledge about low-level procedures that they have automatized. The subgoal learning framework has been used in programming and other fields to breakdown procedural problem solving into smaller pieces that novices can grasp more easily, but it has only been used in shortterm interventions. In this study, the subgoal learning framework was implemented throughout a semester-long introductory programming course …

Leading Learners To Level Up In A High School Mathematics Classroom, Jennifer Carnes Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How often are teachers surprised to find out at the end of a learning episode that students have not actually learned? The first Mathematics Teaching Practice from NCTM’s Principles to Actions asserts that “effective teaching of mathematics establishes clear goals for the mathematics that students are learning, situates goals within learning progressions, and uses the goals to guide instructional decisions” (NCTM, 2014, p. 10). Unfortunately, many teachers struggle to establish clear goals to focus learning, and many students struggle to meet those goals. This research study considered how well students predict success on learning targets for an upcoming test when …

The Successes And Challenges Of Using Worked Examples To Integrate Mp7: Look For And Make Use Of Structure, Jennifer Lynn Barnes

MSU Graduate Theses

The purpose of this action research study was to gain insight into a teacher’s successes and challenges of using worked examples to integrate Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Mathematical Practice 7 (MP7) into a high school Algebra 1 classroom. The 22 participants in this qualitative study were 9^th – 11^th grade students. Ten lessons were taught using worked examples to focus on mathematical structure. Data was collected in the form of reflective teacher journals and student artifacts. Observational data was also collected by a fellow mathematics teacher using an observational protocol. Analysis of the data indicated three successes: …

Varying Effects Of Subgoal Labeled Expository Text In Programming, Chemistry, And Statistics, Lauren Margulieux, Richard Catrambone, Laura M. Schaeffer

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Originally intended as a replication study, this study discusses differences in problem solving performance among different domains caused by the same instructional intervention. The learning sciences acknowledges similarities in the learners’ cognitive architecture that allow interventions to apply across domains, but it also argues that each domain has characteristics that might affect how interventions impact learning. The present study uses an instructional design technique that had previously improved learners’ problem solving performance in programming: subgoal labeled expository text and subgoal labeled worked examples. It intended to replicate this effect for solving problems in statistics and chemistry. However, each of the …

Differentiating Literacy Instruction For Digital Learners: The Effect Of Multimedia Think-Aloud Worked Examples On Adolescent Analytical Reading Comprehension, Diana Combs Neebe

Doctoral Dissertations

Learning by example is nothing new to the education landscape. Research into think-aloud protocols, though often used as a form of assessment rather than instruction, provided practical, content-specific literacy strategies for crafting the instructional intervention in this study. Additionally, research into worked examples—from the earliest pen-and-paper studies of algebra and statistics, to more recent multimedia studies of legal reasoning and writing—shaped the conceptual framework for the present study by detailing a series of design principles for effective multimedia worked examples. This study aimed to reimagine the face-to-face, teacher-facilitated think-aloud as a multimedia worked example, which could be leveraged for differentiated, …

Training Learners To Self-Explain: Designing Instructions And Examples To Improve Problem Solving, Lauren Margulieux, Briana B. Morrison, Mark Guzdial, Richard Catrambone

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In this experiment, we integrated two learning methods – subgoal learning and constructive learning – to explore their interactions and effects on solving computer programming problems. We taught learners to solve problems using worked example and practice problem pairs with one of three kinds of instructional design that either did not highlight the subgoals, described the subgoals, or prompted participants to describe the subgoals for themselves. In addition, we varied the distance of transfer between the worked example and practice problem pairs. We found that instructions that highlighted subgoals improved performance on later problem solving tasks. The groups that performed …

Employing Subgoals In Computer Programming Education, Lauren Margulieux, Richard Catrambone, Mark Guzdial

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

The rapid integration of technology into our professional and personal lives has left many education systems ill-equipped to deal with the influx of people seeking computing education. To improve computing education, we are applying techniques that have been developed for other procedural fields. The present study applied such a technique, subgoal labeled worked examples, to explore whether it would improve programming instruction. The first two experiments, conducted in a laboratory, suggest that the intervention improves undergraduate learners’ problem solving performance and affects how learners approach problem solving. A third experiment demonstrates that the intervention has similar, and perhaps stronger, effects …

Improving Problem Solving With Subgoal Labels In Expository Text And Worked Examples, Lauren Margulieux, Richard Catrambone

Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In highly procedural problem solving, procedures are typically taught with context-independent expository text that conceptually describes a procedure and context-dependent worked examples that concretely demonstrate a procedure. Subgoal labels have been used in worked examples to improve problem solving performance. The effect of subgoal labels in expository text, however, has not been explored. The present study examined the efficacy of subgoal labeled expository text and worked examples for programming education. The results show that learners who received subgoal labels in both the text and example are able to solve novel problems better than those who did not. In addition, subgoal …

Exploring The Use Of Faded Worked Examples As A Problem Solving Approach For Underprepared Students, Tiffany Hesser, Jess L. Gregory

Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Faculty Publications

It is not uncommon for students to find themselves underprepared when entering a post secondary institution. In additional to lower levels of academic achievement, underprepared students may not be aware that they lack the skills needed to be successful and effectively acquire and process information. Because of this, students that enter post-secondary institutions underprepared often require more support in and out of the college classroom.

In computational based classes, such as math, engineering, chemistry or physics, this support often includes an introduction to effective problem solving strategies. This study introduced faded worked examples as a problem solving approach to students …

Worked Examples In Video Lessons To Reduce Cognitive Load, Kiera Llord-Ratcliffe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Informed parent advocates are essential to planning the educational outcomes of their children with special needs in the K through 12 public school system. However, inappropriate instructional techniques used in advocacy training may reduce trainees' learning outcomes by adding complexity and increasing cognitive load. This study examined whether using worked examples to break down complex problems into component parts to build long term schema could lower cognitive load and thus improve learning outcomes for parent advocacy trainees. Based on cognitive load theory, this 2 x 3 factorial design study examined the efficacy of noninteractive video lessons for parent trainees using …