Learning from Worked Examples in Chemistry: A Self-Explanation Training
Open Access
- Author:
- Campbell, Jacqueline Marie
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- January 10, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Peggy Noel Van Meter, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Peggy Noel Van Meter, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Alexandra List, Committee Member
Bonnie J Meyer, Committee Member
Philip C Bevilacqua, Outside Member
Pui-Wa Lei, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Self-Explanation
Strategy Instruction
Worked Examples
Chemistry Education - Abstract:
- Undergraduate science students are known to struggle in introductory courses and often focus their studying efforts on memorization-based, algorithmic processes instead of focusing on gaining a conceptual understanding of the course material. To address this issue, the current study investigates the effects training undergraduate chemistry students to learn more effectively from worked examples. Specifically, the three-part training focuses on the use of a self-explanation learning strategy when learning from worked examples and breaks self-explanation into five sub-strategies: problem categorization, paraphrasing, prediction, elaboration, and comprehension monitoring. Participants who received the training were compared to a control group using information collected via a demographic survey, prior knowledge measure, and posttest measure to understand what effects the training had on students’ ability to learn from worked examples. Findings indicate that those participants who receive the training do not perform as well on the posttest as those who did not receive training. In particular, control condition participants scored higher on the posttest items assessing procedural knowledge, but there were no between-condition differences on items assessing conceptual knowledge. The treatment effects did not differ for students with lower versus higher prior knowledge.