Learning to use a text processing system: Evidence from "thinking aloud" protocols

Abstract

These observations suggest that step-by-step instructions have serious limitations in the ease with which people can learn from them. In general it is very hard to control what learners do: there are many opportunities for incorrectly following directions and failing to do so can interfere with later directions. Unfortunately, learners typically do not understand what they are doing well enough to check themselves and remedy problems. Moreover, we believe that it would be virtually impossible for manual designers to anticipate these pitfalls and provide checkpointing information guaranteed to be read and understood by learners.