(916)TEACHING DECISION RULES VIA WORKED EXAMPLES

摘要

Complex decision making situations that require choosing an option among a set of alternativesincorporate ranking, classifying and comparing alternatives based on specific criteria or goals.Individuals, consciously or unconsciously, use a set of decision strategies or rules in order to select anoption that meets their needs. Choosing the best option necessitates the use of normative decisionrules or strategies and this requires having the knowledge and skills of applying appropriate decisionrules in different decision making tasks [1], [2]. While existing research has focused on identifyingwhich decision rules individuals apply and how they use these rules in differing decision situations [3],[4], [5], [6], there is lack of studies in the literature regarding design interventions on teaching studentshow to use decision rules. However, applying effective instructional methods in order to teach decisionrules will have a great potential to improve learners' decision making skills. One effective instructionalmethod that can be used to help students learn about decision rules is the worked example method,which is based on cognitive load theory. There is an extensive amount of research illustrating theeffectiveness of worked examples on helping students, especially novices, acquire complex cognitiveskills such as problem solving, and argumentation [7], [8], [9], [10]. Although worked examples havebeen used in different domains in a variety of forms (i.e., text based in face to face environments orvideo models presented in online environments), researchers suggest that a set of principles befollowed to design effective worked examples [11], [12], [13]. These fundamental design principles thatall worked examples share include self-explanation effect, split-attention effect, fading effect and soon. This study presents the design process of an online learning environment created based onworked example method to help college students learn about decision rules. First, we will provide abrief introduction on existing design principles of worked examples based on literature. Then, we willexplain which specific principles were applied in designing the online learning environment presentedin this paper and why we chose those principles. After presenting the general structure of the onlineenvironment, we will elaborate on an example of an online worked example designed to teach aspecific decision rule.