Digital Worked Example: an Experiment on Strategies to Enhance Computer Programming Skills

Learning programming in an example-based learning condition is beneficial to learners with low prior knowledge. This study explored digital worked example (DWE) with an instructional explanation to promote completion strategy and faded worked example (FWE) using screencast technology to promote self-explanation activity. Digital worked example (DWE), integrated with instructional explanation, a complete program that written in C-IDE and saved as a C source file for learners to run and modify to view the output. Fading worked example (FWE) designed to support interactivity using screencast; displays the steps to solve programming problems and fades one or more steps to promote self-explanation effect. Foundation Engineering students enrolled in C programming course for the first time participated in this study. An experiment with a control group (used DWE, n=53) and an experimental group (used FWE, n=51) carried out over seven weeks. Results from this study show that the effect of screencast not significantly effective when transferring basic programming knowledge to gain program writing skills. The DWE with instructional explanation is suitable for novices, and the impact of fading techniques in a worked example (FWE) using screencast is significantly effective in the near transfer performance but not for far transfer performance. However, participant perceived learning experience using worked example with different strategies shows a higher preference for FWE than DWE. The outcome of this study makes room for future research to focus on cognitive overload principles when using screencast technology for a worked example.