Here we show: (1) creating explanations of STEM phenomena improves learning without additional teaching and (2) creating visual explanations is superior to creating verbal ones. Uncovering cognitive principles for effective teaching and learning is a central application of cognitive psychology. Together, the findings provide support for the use of learner-generated visual explanations as a powerful learning tool. The benefits should generalize to other domains like the social sciences, history, and archeology where important information can be visualized. The greater effectiveness of visual explanations appears attributable to the checks they provide for completeness and coherence as well as to their roles as platforms for inference. Visual explanations often included crucial yet invisible features. Creating a visual explanation was superior and benefitted participants of both high and low spatial ability. For the chemical system, creating both visual and verbal explanations improved learning without new teaching. For the mechanical system, creating a visual explanation increased understanding particularly for participants of low spatial ability. Both kinds of explanations were analyzed for content and learning assess by a post-test. We compared learning from creating visual or verbal explanations for two STEM domains, a mechanical system (bicycle pump) and a chemical system (bonding). Because visual explanations can show parts and processes of complex systems directly, creating them should have benefits beyond creating verbal explanations. While instruction typically involves visualizations, students usually explain in words. Mechanisms and processes outside student experience present particular challenges. Many topics in science are notoriously difficult for students to learn.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |