Faded Worked Examples 39

After learners have gained enough schemata, the way of prompting self- explanation in the completed worked examples, by asking for explanations of worked out steps, will become redundant. So less scaffolding for prompting self- explanation is required. “Incomplete” worked examples can be used, with the aim to help students apply what they have learned before.

Renkl et al. [50] termed worked examples with the insertion of “blanks” into the solution steps as faded worked examples. In this study, it was shown that

incomplete examples could improve the quality of self-explanations and, as a consequence, the transfer of solution methods. Hence, they suggested that novices should firstly study fully worked-out examples, then complete steps in problems with ‘‘blanks’’, and finally solve problems without any instructional support.

Renkl and Atkinson [18] discussed the reason why worked examples and faded worked examples could work effectively from the cognitive load perspective. A typical example of problem fading is when the worked-out steps in a worked example are gradually turned into standard problem solving steps by removing the worked-out elements in the steps (the explanations). Because the assistance of giving the steps is faded, the steps (explanations) are omitted. The students must generate these steps (or explanations) by themselves. Renkl and Atkinson

[18] also claimed that active self-explaining is crucial for learners in the beginning of the intermediate stage, because learners are going to learn the rationale of how to apply their basic knowledge of the domain that they have gained in the early stage. They identified self-explanation activities, which are:

1. Anticipative Reasoning: A learner tries to anticipate the next solution step and then confirms his prediction by looking it up. This activity can support learner to construct mental rules for problem solving and to check

understanding.

2. Noticing coherence: A learner notices similarities or differences between different examples. Through an activity of comparing examples, it can foster the learner to induce abstract schemas.

Self-explanation refers to a learner’s effort in gaining an understanding of a solution rationale, which can be considered as Germane Cognitive Load. It also can be understood as explanations provided by learners and mainly for their own benefit. These explanations were intentionally not given in the learning

materials and they refer to solution steps and the reasons for them.

Faded worked-out examples should be employed at this stage to promote

learners’ skill acquisition in order to structure the transition from example study to problem solving. In other words, it means at this phase learners will use self- explanation to convince themselves in order to solve the problem. Hence, in the intermediate stage the learner forges links within his or her domain knowledge by using self-explanation in an effort to generalize over surface structure in order to achieve heightened understanding.

Renkl [5] also claimed that novices have limited prior knowledge and are unable to use domain specific strategies in the initial stages of cognitive skill acquisition. With this limitation, novices often rely on a means-end approach, which focuses on just trying to obtain a solution to a problem rather than understanding the material. This behaviour is immediately recognisable to the tutor of any novice programmer given a hard problem to solve. The transition from initial stages of skill acquisition to deeper understanding can be facilitated by faded examples. In the later stage of skill acquisitions, studying worked examples becomes less effective because the learners have to think for themselves, which is best

accomplished by actual problem solving. This discussion matches Frize and

Frasson’s idea [51], which is that different levels of learners, should be taught in different pedagogical approaches.

Schwonke et al. [52] claimed that faded worked out examples are particularly helpful for the intermediate stage of skill acquisition in which the primary instructional aim is to gain understanding and close knowledge gaps. Thereby, more of the learners’ limited processing capacity (working memory) can be devoted to understanding the domain principles and their application in problem solving, especially when worked-out examples are combined with self-

explanation prompts and corrective feedback. Based on their experimental results, they found that fading the worked-out steps can lead to a deeper conceptual understanding than problem solving alone, it leads a better transfer performance in learning, and meanwhile, it can reduce the learning time

comparing with only example-based learning and make the learning more efficient.

Using faded worked examples makes the “dialogue” between students and learning objects happen. It has been evaluated that learning objects, which provide feedback when students interact with them, could benefit their learning progress. From the CLT angle, it can be explained that more of the learners’ working memory could be used to understand the domain principles which could help them to alter their long term memory to finish the learning; meanwhile, from the education feedback angle, it can be explained that the “dialogue” between students and learning objects could ideally help students to arrive at the same level of concept engagement as the teacher’s expectation.

Having identified the qualities of both worked, and faded worked, examples, guidance for designing effective examples will now be reviewed.

2.5.3 Guidance for Design Worked Example and Faded Worked