Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
Recent empirical results suggest that the instructional material used to teach computing may actually overload students' cognitive abilities. Better designed materials may enhance learning by reducing unnecessary load. Subgoal labels have been shown to be effective at reducing the cognitive load during problem solving in both mathematics and science. Until now, subgoal labels have been given to students to learn passively. We report on a study to determine if giving learners subgoal labels is more or less effective than asking learners to generate subgoal labels within an introductory CS programming task. The answers are mixed and depend on other features of the instructional materials. We found that student performance gains did not replicate as expected in the introductory CS task for those who were given subgoal labels. Computer science may require different kinds of problem-solving or may generate different cognitive demands than mathematics or science.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/2787622.2787733
Recommended Citation
Morrison, Briana B.; Margulieux, Lauren; and Guzdial, Mark, "Subgoals, Context, and Worked Examples in Learning Computing Problem Solving" (2015). Learning Sciences Faculty Publications. 34.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/2787622.2787733
Comments
Author accepted manuscript version of an article published in
Morrison, B. B., Margulieux, L. E., & Guzdial, M. (2015). Subgoals, context, and worked examples in learning computing problem solving. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual International Conference on International Computing Education Research (pp. 21-29). New York, NY: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2787622.2787733