When students are provided with practice or application assignments after learning new content, they often use incorrect strategies because they do not fully understand the underlying concepts. You can prevent this ineffective struggle by providing students with worked examples when introducing a new skill or process. It is most beneficial to provide multiple examples that illustrate the same underlying concept or skill with different surface features, as well as correct and incorrect examples where students are asked to identify the differences. Providing worked examples during initial instruction reduces cognitive load, but they are not effective when students already understand the underlying concept.
Ideally, provide detailed worked examples when introducing a new topic, narrating your thought process in live classes or annotating a document in an online class, then gradually provide less detail while students complete more of the steps on their own, fading support over time until they are proficient independently. To boost effectiveness, encourage students to self-explain as they read through a worked example, telling themselves why each step was taken.
What does this look like in practice?
- In biology, you could provide diagrams demonstrating various metabolic responses, each with labels explaining what happens with each component and why, then provide some practice problems of similar models that are only partially completed, asking students to complete them and provide explanations.
- In a writing lesson, students could be provided with two essays of different quality with various components highlighted and annotated. After students study the two examples, they could fill in missing pieces of another partially completed essay, such as writing their own effective transition sentences or developing an appropriate thesis statement.
- In business management, detailed case studies are effective worked examples that illustrate course concepts such as financial ratios, market data, or leadership theories. Students could then be provided with a case study that includes analysis of some components while the learner completes the rest.
- In history, an annotated or think-aloud analysis of a primary source document demonstrates to learners how experts approach these resources. Examples may include thoughts such as, “I notice the date is 1861, which tells me the author’s bias is likely influenced by the start of the Civil War…”. Students could then complete their own annotations or think-aloud on a similar primary source document.