The role of self‐explanation in learning to use a spreadsheet through examples

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Abstract
Abstract  This papers describes an exploratory study into the early phase of getting to know end‐user software during which users make use of a variety of information resources, including the user interface/program itself, manuals, on‐line help, examples provided in the manuals and other sources. In particular, how do novices make use of the worked‐out examples often provided in manuals and during training? Building on earlier research on the self‐explanation effect, thinking aloud data from 10 participants were analysed to see how examples were studied and how they were used during problem solving. Important effects of self‐explaining comparable to findings in other domains were found in this study. For instance, those participants who self‐explain with the goal to discover meaning prove to be better problem solvers than those who do not self‐explain or who focus more on syntactical aspects of examples.

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