Content area
Abstract
Previous research has found that both expertise and strategic processing affect learning outcomes (e.g., Glaser & Bassok, 1989). Interactions between expertise and strategic processing during learning, however, have not been extensively examined. This study investigated how different levels of expertise in a domain affected the on-line strategic processing done by persons during the learning of declarative information in the domain.
Subjects were four undergraduate students, three first year graduate students, three advanced doctoral students, and three professors in cognitive psychology. Subjects were asked to think aloud while learning information about a computer model of problem solving from a written passage. They were audio and video taped during the learning task. After a minimum one day delay, subjects completed a free recall essay, short answer test, and problem solving test over the learning material.
Subject verbal protocols were transcribed and segmented into cognitive episodes from audio and video tapes. Segments were scored for type of strategic processing occurring during the episode. Overall study time and study time per page were calculated from the video tape. Similarities within expertise levels in individual subjects' proportional use of strategies and study time allocation and differences between expertise levels in the mean proportional use of strategies and study time allocation were examined. Also, expertise levels were compared on learning outcome measures and a follow-up analysis was conducted comparing the mean proportional use of strategies and study time allocation between subjects scoring high and low on recall of information from the learning passage.
No overall expertise effects were found for strategic processing or study time. Expertise also did not affect the amount of information learned, although the integration of new information with existing knowledge was more extensive for more expert subjects. Subjects scoring high and low on learned information did not differ in study time allocation and differed only in use of strategies that interconnected information from different parts of the learning passage. Analyses of individual subjects indicated idiosyncratic use of strategies.
