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The worked example effect within cognitive load theory is a very wellestablished finding. The concrete effectiveness of worked examples in a learning situation, however, heavily depends on further moderating factors. For example, if learners improve their processing of worked examples by actively explaining the worked examples to themselves, they are usually better able to solve transfer problems. Another way to enhance example processing is to present learners with instructional explanations instead of prompting them to produce these explanations on their own. In this article, we review 21 experimental studies to address the issue whether instructional explanations support example-based learning. Meta-analytic results lead to three important conclusions: First, the benefits of instructional explanations for example-based learning per se are minimal. Second, instructional explanations are more helpful for acquiring conceptual knowledge than for acquiring procedural knowledge. Third, instructional explanations are not necessarily more effective than other methods supporting example processing such as self-explaining.Keywords Cognitive skill acquisition . Instructional explanations . Learning from worked examples . Meta-analysis Learning from worked examples, also called example-based learning, is an instructional method that has been intensively investigated in educational psychology. Typically, example-based learning is designed in the following way: First, learners receive a general instruction in which concepts and principles of a domain are introduced. Second, learners study worked examples that are an instance of these concepts and principles. The worked examples normally consist of three components presented to the learners: (1) the

To give effective and efficient advice to laypersons, experts should adapt their explanations to the layperson's knowledge. However, experts often fail to consider the limited domain knowledge of laypersons. To support adaptation in asynchronous helpdesk communication, researchers provided computer experts with information about a layperson's knowledge. A dialogue experiment (N = 80 dyads of experts and laypersons) was conducted that varied the displayed information. Rather than sensitizing the experts to generally improve the intelligibility of their explanations, the individuating information about the layperson enabled them to make specific partner adjustments that increased the effectiveness and efficiency of the communication. The results are suggestive of ways in which the provision of instructional explanations could be enhanced in Internet-based communication.

Science Society in London, UK (2017, July) and have been published in a proceedings paper (Prinz, Golke, & Wittwer, 2017). The proceedings paper and this manuscript overlap in some of the data concerning comprehension and metacomprehension accuracy of the statistics text. However, the proceedings paper only presented results of a subsample and included no thinkaloud data and no analyses on transfer. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This study was funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Deutschland (the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany) under Grant 01JA1518A.

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Tutors often make use of explanations that do not promote learning. One reason for the ineffectiveness of explanations might lie in tutors' failure to take into account a tutee's understanding in order to individualize instruction. To test whether tutors provide more effective explanations when they are assisted in assessing a tutee's understanding, we conducted an experiment (N ϭ 30 dyads of tutors and tutees) and varied whether tutors received information about a tutee's individual knowledge level. Results showed that only tutors provided with information about the tutee were able to customize instruction. As a consequence, the individualized explanations lowered the incidence of clarifying questions on the part of the tutees, deepened their understanding, and reduced the number of false beliefs about newly learned concepts. The findings suggest that a diagnosis-based approach to support tutors in developing a model of the tutee effectively contributes to the individualization of instruction in tutoring.