How people learn to program8 min read

Self-Explanations: How Students Study and Use Examples in Learning to Solve Problems

Michelene T. H. Chi, Miriam Bassok, Matthew W. Lewis, Peter Reimann, Robert Glaser · 1989 · Cognitive Science 13(2), 145–182

Students who explained worked examples to themselves — line by line, why does this step follow — learned far more from the same examples than students who just read them.

Read the paper ↗doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1302_1 ↗

The short version

→Physics students studied the same worked examples; the ones who later solved problems well had generated many more self-explanations while studying.
→Good students explained the why of each step and noticed when they did not understand; poor students said ‘okay, I get it’ and moved on.
→The difference was not time on task or prior ability alone — it was what the student did with the example.
→This is the origin of the ‘self-explanation effect’ and the reason Saasworld asks you to say what code does, not just whether it runs.

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