worked-example

A worked example is a step-by-step demonstration of how to solve a problem — the reasoning made visible, so a learner can follow it before they can build their own.

Cognitive load theory's worked-example effect is one of its best-validated findings: novices learn faster from worked examples than from problem-solving, because the examples reduce extraneous load and provide an expert mental model to follow. But the effect reverses with expertise (the expertise reversal effect): as learners gain knowledge, the examples become redundant and can harm performance. Worked examples help most when paired with self-explanation prompts — the learner generates their own explanation of each step, and passive self-explainers gain little. For the canary wing: an annotated checklist (with the author's reasoning made visible) is a worked example of the midpoint-finding method, and the worked-example effect predicts it helps novices for the explicit layer only — the tacit judgment is the step the example cannot show.