Facilitating Students' Reasoning with Causal Explanations and Visual Representations

Abstract : This article reports on a study of students learning to program using GIL, the Graphical Instruction in LISP intelligent tutoring system. GIL is designed to explore the construction of explanations from problem solving knowledge, and the use of visual representatives in problem solving. We first present a brief overview of GIL, then describe the analyses of students learning to solve simple programming problems using GIL. Our initial data address two questions: (1) Are the explanations provided by GIL effective in guiding student reasoning?, and (2) Are students able to learn to program using graphical representations (i.e. what benefits are provided by this representation of programming?) Keywords: Cognitive psychology, Decision making, Delayed outcome, Risk assessment. (Author) (kr)