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Abstract
Errors are inevitable in most learning contexts, but under the right conditions, they can be beneficial for learning. However, it is unclear how and how to support students to learn from self-generated errors. We first conducted a think-aloud study (n = 44) to investigate students’ cognitive activities of self-explaining and drawing when they compared their erroneous responses with expert solutions after solving biochemistry problems. The think-aloud study provided strong evidence that self-explanations of correcting deep errors that include explaining why correct answers are correct and why incorrect answers are incorrect played a significant role in students’ learning from their errors. Then, we did a follow-up experiment (n = 132) to investigate the causal, positive effects of self-explaining and drawing on students’ learning from errors. Students were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions to help them learn from errors: self-explaining support only (n = 30), drawing prompts only (n = 31), drawing prompts and self-explaining support (n = 27), and a control condition with neither self-explaining support nor drawing prompts (n = 33). Consistent with the think-aloud study, students who received self-explaining support that helped them detect and correct deep errors had a significantly better conceptual understanding of non-covalent interactions than students in the control condition. However, the effects of drawing might depend on students’ drawing qualities, and drawing activities without instructional support might interfere with self-explaining activities. Moreover, the experience of learning from errors had a positive effect on students’ task-specific self-efficacy but not on self-efficacy in the domain.