When Instructional Guidance is Needed

Abstract

Studying worked examples providing problem solutions to learners usually leads to better test performance than solving the equivalent problems without guidance, demonstrating the worked-example effect. The generation effect occurs when learners who generate answers without guidance learn better than those who read answers that provide guidance. The contradiction between these results can be hypothesised to be due to differences in the element interactivity of the learning tasks. Primary school students in Year 6 participated in the experiment, which investigated the hypothesis by using geometry materials. A disordinal interaction was obtained between levels of guidance and levels of element interactivity. Higher levels of guidance facilitated learning using high element interactivity information, while lower levels of guidance facilitated learning for low element interactivity information. Cognitive load theory was used to explain these contrasting results. From an educational perspective, it was suggested that when determining levels of guidance, a consideration of element interactivity is essential.

Keywords::

• cognitive load theory
• guidance
• worked-example effect
• generation effect
• element interactivity

Acknowledgment

We thank the principal of Hongguang Primary school, Chengdu, China, who supported this research.

Financial Support

We thank the China Scholarship Council which provided a research grant (No. 201308110473) to the first author.

Conflicts of Interests

None.

Ethical Standards

Ethics approval (No. HC15240) for the procedures used in this study was provided by the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia as an integral part of the first author's PhD program.