What a Worked Example Teaches

An example is a lesson

In teaching, a worked example is a problem shown solved, step by step, so that a learner can see the reasoning and not only the answer. We use the term on purpose. We think of what we build and publish as worked examples of a way of working, and we would like them to be judged the way a teacher judges a worked example: by whether it helps someone else do the next one.

What the research says

A page from the MIT Open Learning group summarises the research. It reports that for people who are not yet experts and are learning a new concept, studying worked examples works better than trying to solve problems. The same page says that most students are in that position most of the time. The reasoning behind the finding is about working memory. Sweller and colleagues describe new information as being processed in a severely limited working memory, and they note that schemas stored in long-term memory let learners process information more efficiently.

Where examples stop helping

The MIT page states that worked examples are effective only when learners self-explain the solutions, and it recommends giving multiple, varied examples of the same concept. An example that is admired and not examined teaches little. The page also says that experts benefit more from attempting to solve problems than from studying worked examples. In 2003 Sweller, Ayres, Kalyuga and Chandler reviewed the evidence for this in Educational Psychologist and called it the expertise reversal effect. They report that methods which work well for inexperienced learners can lose their benefit, or even harm, more experienced learners.

How we apply it

We think a worked example is useful when it is one of several, when the reader examines it rather than admires it, and when the reader is free to find where it does not fit. The Leopard companies, MaxxForge and LUXXMARK are designed to serve outside customers as well as our own portfolio. The portfolio is a worked example of that purpose, not the limit of it. We think a founder reading about our portfolio should ask which parts apply to their own situation and which do not. We think an expert in a given field may learn more from a hard problem than from any example we can offer.

We do not claim that one example proves anything. The research above concerns learning, not business, and we are applying it by analogy. Readers who know a field better than we do, and for whom an example teaches less, are the people we most want to hear from.