Fading solution steps and revealing the solution when modelling skills

Watching others demonstrate a skill is often how we learn to perform the skill ourselves. There is little research on skill acquisition with demonstrations and how learning from demonstrations can be fostered. However, we can transfer findings from research on worked examples. We investigated to what extent the fading of solution steps and the revealing of the remaining solution steps influence the skill acquisition in learning from demonstrations. A 2x2 experimental study with the factors fading of solution steps and revealing of the remaining solution steps was conducted. University students learned to calculate Cohen’s Kappa from video demonstrations. Results show that fading has a positive effect on students’ skill acquisition. An effect revealing of the remaining solution steps was not found. The positive effect of fading on skill acquisition is coherent with results from research on worked examples, supporting our hypothesis that learning from demonstrations is a type of example based-learning and based on similar mechanisms.