Abstracts - Earli

approaches to solve them. All analytical steps and recommendations are illustrated with metaanalyticaldata on the effect of school type on student achievement gains. Recommendations forresearch practice will be derived.Learning from book-based examples: Exploring the impact of combining fading with prompts andmatricesRobert Atkinson, Arizona State University, USAMary Margaret Lusk, Louisiana State University - Shreveport, USABrian Beitzel, State University of New York - Oneonta, USAThe purpose of this study was two-fold. One goal of this study was to explore whether the fadingapproach, which supports the transition from studying examples in initial skill acquisition toproblem solving in later phases of the learning process, combined with principle-based selfexplanationprompts can be successfully implemented in a book-based environment. Another goalwas to explore whether the use of matrices can facilitate learning from example-based instructionby making the subgoal structure of worked-out examples and practice problems more salient.Ninety seven undergraduates were randomly assigned one of four conditions: (a) prompting +matrix, (b) prompting-only, (c) matrix-only, or (d) control (no prompting or matrix). Theparticipants studied a pencil-paper instructional packet consisting of two sets of probability taskspresented via the fading approach before completing a posttest consisting of near and far transferitems. We found that participants assigned to the prompting-only produced more conceptuallyaccurate solutions to near and far transfer problems than their counterparts in the control condition(fading only). As a result, we recommend that instructional designers consider the use of promptsthat encourage learners to determine the principle that underlie the solution steps in worked-outexamples. On the other hand, this study suggests that instructional designers should be cautionsabout employing prompts in combination with matrices in support of example-based learning sincewe found them to be detrimental to learning.Video diaries, user requirements and interdisciplinary boundary-crossingRichard Procter, University of Cambridge, United KingdomVito Laterza, University of Cambridge, United KingdomAlthough video technology is now widely used by education researchers, characteristically forobservation of teaching and learning environments, there has been very little use of video toilluminate the work of educational researchers themselves. In this paper we describe a novel use of‘video diaries’ to illuminate the working practices of educational researchers working on projectswithin the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Teaching and LearningResearch Programme (TLRP). The specific purpose of this activity was to gather ‘userrequirements for software developers employed to develop and evaluate a Virtual ResearchEnvironment for Education under the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) VirtualResearch Environments Programme. A series of two individual and two collaborative structuredand semi-structured tasks were developed which groups of participants undertook themselves,having been provided with digital video cameras, tapes and instructions. Our findings show apositive and enthusiastic response from the researchers who were willing to engage with the tasks.The videos provided rich contextual information which supplemented other data sources (surveys,interviews and routine data collected online) and offered insights into individual and collaborativeworking practices in diverse institutional contexts. We describe specific instances of data collectedand discuss advantages and disadvantages of this data collection ‘at a distance’, comparing it withother reflective approaches. We also describe how the video data act as ‘boundary objects’ and– 688 –