In 3 experiments, we examined the effects of using concrete and/or abstract visual problem representations during instruction on students' problem-solving practice, near transfer, problem representations, and learning perceptions. In Experiments 1 and 2, novice students learned about electrical circuit analysis with an instructional program that included worked-out and practice problems represented with abstract (Group A), concrete (Group C), or abstract and concrete diagrams (Group AC), whereby the cover stories were abstract in Group A and concrete in Groups C and AC. Experiment 3 added a 4th condition (C-A) with a concrete cover story and abstract diagrams. Group AC outperformed Groups A and C on problem-solving practice in Experiments 1 and 2 and outperformed Group C on transfer across the 3 experiments; Group AC also outperformed Group C-A in Experiment 3. Further, Group A outperformed Group C on transfer in Experiments 2 and 3 and outperformed Group C-A in Experiment 3. Transfer scores were positively associated with the quality of the diagrams and the number of abstract representations drawn during the transfer test. Data on students' learning perceptions suggest that the advantage of Group AC relies on the combined cognitive support of both representations. Our studies indicate that problem solving is fostered when learners experience concrete visual representations that connect to their prior knowledge and are enabled to use abstract visual representations. Keywords: abstract visual representation, concrete visual representation, problem solvingHow can teachers help novice students develop problem-solving skills and positive learning perceptions? Research in wellstructured domains, such as physics and mathematics, has shown that one promising method consists of initially demonstrating the problem-solving process with worked-out examples and later engaging learners in guided problem-solving practice (Atkinson, Derry, Renkl, & Wortham, 2000;Koedinger & Aleven, 2007;Renkl, 2005;Renkl & Atkinson, 2003). In past studies with novice college students, we found that this method can successfully promote the transfer of learned principles to novel electrical engineering problems (Moreno, Reisslein, & Delgoda, 2006;Moreno, Reisslein, & Ozogul, 2009a). Despite these favorable outcomes, the assumptions underlying the design of the visual representations corresponding to the worked-out and practice problems (e.g., electrical circuit diagrams) were not tested.The design of the visual representations in our past studies was based on the typical diagrams used in college engineering textbooks, which mostly represent electrical engineering problems with abstract diagrams. An abstract diagram provides a schematic depiction of an engineering problem and uses standard engineering symbols (Alexander & Sadiku, 2004;Irwin & Nelms, 2005), such as the zig-zag symbol to represent a light bulb. In contrast, we define concrete electrical engineering diagrams as those that provide realistic illustrations of the real-life electrical e...

An experiment examined the effects of visual signalling to relevant information in multiple external representations and the visual presence of an animated pedagogical agent (APA). Students learned electric circuit analysis using a computer-based learning environment that included Cartesian graphs, equations and electric circuit diagrams. The experiment was a 2 (visual signalling, no visual signalling) × 2 (visual APA presence, no visual APA presence) between-subjects design, resulting in four experimental conditions: visual signalling with APA presence (APA + S), visual signalling without APA presence (S), no visual signalling with APA presence (APA) and no visual signalling without APA presence (C). Signalling was provided via gestures of the APA in the APA + S condition and via dynamic arrows in the S condition. To investigate potential moderating effects of prior knowledge on APA presence and visual signalling factors, middle school students were grouped into low prior knowledge (LPK) and high prior knowledge (HPK) groups using scores on a domain pre-test. Results revealed that LPK students had higher post-test scores after learning with visual signalling, resulting in equivalent post-test performance to their HPK counterparts. LPK students also had higher post-test scores, higher ratings of graphics understanding and lower perceived difficulty ratings in conditions that included the visual image of the APA. Conversely, HPK students had better post-test scores after learning without the APA. These results indicate that the effectiveness of visual signalling techniques and the visual presence of an APA is dependent on learner characteristics, including prior domain knowledge.

This study tested the hypothesis that animated pedagogical agents (APAs) can effectively support students’ learning by signaling visual information in multiple-representation learning environments. Novice students learned about electrical circuit analysis with an agent-based instructional program that included circuit diagrams and the corresponding Cartesian graphs. For some students, attention to relevant parts of the display was guided by an animated arrow (A group) or the deictic movements of a pedagogical agent (P group). A control (C) group learned with no visual attention-guiding method. Group P outperformed groups C and A on a posttest and gave lower difficulty ratings than group C. The findings suggest that a promising function of APAs is to support students’ cognitive processing during learning.

The study investigated the effects of three types of evaluation on preservice teachers' performance, knowledge and attitudes related to writing lesson plans that incorporate technology. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment conditions: teacher-evaluation, self-evaluation or peer-evaluation. All groups completed three class periods of instruction on writing lesson plans, then each subject submitted his/her draft lesson plan. The drafts were evaluated by assigned evaluators (teacher, self or peer), who provided scores and written feedback on a 15-item rubric. Students then revised their lesson plans into final form. All three treatment groups improved their lesson plans significantly from draft version to final version, with the teacher-evaluation group showing significantly greater improvement and writing significantly better final lesson plans than each of the other two groups. Teacher-evaluation and self-evaluation groups had significantly higher scores on a knowledge-based posttest than the peer-evaluation group. Several suggestions are discussed for making further improvements in the self-evaluation and peer-evaluation processes.