Learning to use a spreadsheet by doing and by watching

Abstract

An important practical question is: how should instruction for computer skills be designed to facilitate effective learning? The reported study examines the instructional efficacy of animated demonstrations within active and passive learning contexts of teaching basic spreadsheet skills. Four content-matched instructional regimes were compared: the commercially available tutorial (a ‘scenario machine’), an animated demonstration of this tutorial being used, and problem solving supported by either the user manual or a set of task-specific demonstrations. Acquired spreadsheet skills were then tested on a standard task. Results indicate a clear learning advantage of problem solving, over prompted interaction (the scenario machine). The study suggests two distinctive roles that animations could exploit within computer instruction. Simply watching an animated demonstration can provide a useful introduction to complex interfaces; additionally, animations can be an effective ‘example following’ resource for more active problem-solving.