Can worked examples teach a skill and course content at once?
Students who learned argumentation skills from examples built around their actual course topics felt no more mental strain and learned about as well as students whose examples used simple unrelated topics.
Source
Example-based learning in heuristic domains: can using relevant content knowledge support the effective allocation of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load?
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Students randomly allocated to an online worked-example argumentation training whose examples used either course-relevant or irrelevant (simple, familiar) topics; pre/post epistemic beliefs and four argumentations up to about 9 weeks later
- N
- N=142 · 142 consenting students randomised (68 relevant-content, 74 irrelevant-content); analyses of delayed argumentations used a smaller subset with course assignments available, and exact per-analysis Ns are not all stated
- Population
- Undergraduate psychology students in a required 'Pedagogy for Psychotherapists' course at three German universities
- Outcome
- Self-reported intrinsic, extraneous and germane cognitive load; declarative knowledge of skill components and course content; epistemic beliefs (CAEB); argumentation quality
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
Psychology undergraduates completed an online training of about 5 hours on epistemic beliefs, combining information from multiple documents, and argumentative thinking, delivered partly through segmented videos of student models with self-explanation prompts. Students were randomly assigned so that the example videos used either course topics they would be examined on (such as media violence and school tracking) or familiar but irrelevant topics (such as athletes' wages); the irrelevant group then read the course content separately. The researchers measured cognitive load after each module, knowledge tests and epistemic beliefs after training, and argumentation quality before, right after, about 1 week after, and about 9 weeks after training.
What they found
The two groups did not differ in intrinsic, extraneous or germane cognitive load, and Bayes factors mostly favoured no difference. Knowledge of epistemic beliefs, argumentative thinking and course content, and later argumentation quality, were similar across groups; the only difference favoured the irrelevant-topic group on knowledge about combining multiple documents. Overall, epistemic beliefs became more advanced after training, and argumentation quality dipped immediately after training but rose clearly in the two delayed essays. Self-reported cognitive load was not correlated with any learning outcome.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Students' perception of which topics were relevant was never measured, so the 'relevant' and 'irrelevant' conditions may not have differed psychologically as intended, which could explain the null effects. There was no untrained control group, so the improvement in delayed essays could reflect practice, course teaching or higher stakes (the delayed essays were graded course assignments) rather than the training. Argumentation topics were not counterbalanced, inter-rater reliability for scoring was only moderate, cognitive load was self-reported, and the online, self-paced format meant time on task could not be controlled.
Key terms
- Worked example
- A demonstration showing a problem and the steps or strategies used to solve it, which learners study before solving problems themselves.
- Cognitive load theory
- A theory that learning is limited by working-memory capacity, distinguishing intrinsic load (task complexity), extraneous load (poor design) and germane load (resources devoted to learning).
- Exemplifying domain
- The content topic used to illustrate a skill in a worked example, as opposed to the skill itself (the learning domain).
- Epistemic beliefs
- A person's views about the nature of knowledge, such as whether it is certain or changing, simple or complex.
- Heuristic skill
- A skill like argumentation or essay writing that has no single correct step-by-step solution path and relies on flexible strategies.
Flashcards
0 of 11 answers reviewed
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
What was the main research question?
Common questions
Why would cognitive load theory predict that relevant content hurts learning?
If learners must understand both the skill and new content at once, more interacting elements must be held in working memory, raising intrinsic load and possibly overloading learners.
So is it fine to teach skills using real course content?
This study suggests it did not hurt, which could make teaching more efficient, but because the manipulation of perceived relevance was not checked and there was no untrained control group, it is preliminary support rather than proof.
Why did argumentation get worse immediately after training?
The authors suggest fatigue after a long training, lower motivation for an ungraded essay, or a 'utilization deficiency' where a newly learned skill takes too many resources to apply well at first.
More on Learning