The Design of Self-explanation Prompts: The Fit Hypothesis
Robert G. M. Hausmann, Timothy J. Nokes, Kurt A. VanLehn, Sophia Gershman · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2009
Cognitive science principles should have implications for the design of effective learning environments.The selfexplanation principle was chosen for the current project because it has developed significantly over the past few years.Early formulations suggested that self-explanation facilitated inference generation to supply missing information about a concept or target skill, whereas later work suggested that selfexplanation facilitated mental-model revision (Chi, 2000).To better understand the complex interaction between prior knowledge, cognitive processing, and changes to a learner's representation, three different types of self-explanation prompts were designed and tested in the domain of physics problem solving.The results suggest that prompts designed to focus on problem-solving steps led to a sustained level of engagement with the examples and a reduction in the number of hints needed to solve the physics problems.