Empirical studies within a cognitive load framework have determined that for novice learners, worked examples provide appropriate levels of instructional guidance. As learners advance in specific subject domains, worked examples should be gradually replaced by practice problems with limited guidance. These studies compared immediate and delayed performance in transfer from examples to practice problems using example-problems pairs and gradual fixed fading of worked examples as well as a control condition of pure problem solving. These studies were conducted with employees of a financial services company in a classroom environment. In Experiments 1 and 2, the fading condition indicated possible benefits over the other conditions on immediate and delayed performance measures (although results were not statistically significant). Experiment 3 used a modified fading method and demonstrated that the fading condition performed marginally better than the problem solving condition on delayed performance measures (although results were not statistically significant). Even though the fading condition did not demonstrate significant advantages in immediate post-test measures, over time learners benefited most from this condition. Experiment 4 investigated if the delayed fading effect found in experiment 3 would be observed using far transfer test performance measures. The results of this experiment indicated that the fading condition performed marginally better than the problem solving condition on delayed transfer post-test performance (although results were not statistically significant). Generally the results of this thesis favored the fading condition over the example-problem and problem solving conditions, and the advantage of this condition was enhanced with greater performance in delayed and transfer post-test measures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/258477 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Kissane, Mark Richard, Education, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Kissane Mark Richard., http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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