Pictorial aids for learning by doing in a multimedia geology simulation game.

How can we help students learn to solve authentic geology problems within a virtual environment? The task was to survey an area of a planet's surface to identify the presence of various geological features such as a trench, ridge, basin, island, or seamount. Students who received prior pictorial representations of each of the possible features (pictorial scaffolding) performed more accurately than students who did not (in Experiments 2 and 3), but there was no significant effect (in Experiments 1 and 2) for including verbal statements about strategies for drawing lines and points (strategic scaffolding). Some cognitive apprenticeship techniques (such as pictorial scaffolding) are useful aids to learning in computer-based geology simulations.