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

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]