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15 - The Worked-Out Examples Principle in Multimedia Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Alexander Renkl
Edited by
Richard Mayer
Alexander Renkl
Affiliation:
University of Freiburg
Richard Mayer
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Summary

Abstract

People gain a deep understanding when they receive worked-out examples in initial cognitive skill acquisition. This is, however, only true when the following guidelines are considered: prompt or train self-explaining examples (guideline of self-explanation elicitation); provide principle-based, minimalist, and example-related instructional explanations as help (help guideline); design examples so that the relations between different representations can be easily detected (easy-mapping guideline); make salient the examples' structural features that are relevant for selecting the correct solution procedure (structure-emphasizing guideline); and facilitate the isolation of meaningful building blocks in worked-out procedures (meaningful building-blocks guideline). Furthermore, series of examples with successively faded worked-out steps should be employed in order to structure the transition from example study to problem solving in later phases of skill acquisition.

Introduction

Learning by doing and learning by solving complex problems are methods of learning that are en vogue and frequently propagated in the literature on learning and instruction in general as well as on multimedia learning. However, often learners have a very restricted understanding of the domain when they try to solve the first problems. In this case, they typically rely on general, domain-unspecific problem-solving heuristics such as means-ends analysis. This actually leads to the correct answer in many cases. However, does such striving for the right answer lead to a profound understanding of the domain? Would it not be better for the students to begin solving problems after they have already gained some significant understanding of the domain?

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning , pp. 229 - 246
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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