Reader style: novice
Who
- Reader: someone meeting the domain for the first time, reading to understand, not to look up.
- Expertise: novice in the subject; may be expert elsewhere, which does not transfer.
- Reading mode: front to back, at least on the first pass.
Overrides
| Principle | Change | Why |
|---|---|---|
| define before use | strengthen: define every term, including ones "everybody knows" in the field | a novice cannot infer the missing definition; readers with little prior knowledge learn more from explicit, cohesive text (McNamara et al. 1996b) |
| worked examples with subgoals | strengthen: solve the first problem of each kind in full, then fade | the worked-example effect is largest for novices (Sweller 2019; Renkl et al. 2004) |
| overview first | strengthen: open with an advance organizer that names the parts before any detail | organizers help most when the reader has no schema yet (reading order) |
| short reference distance | strengthen: repeat a one-line reminder of a definition at a distant use, with a link | a novice reinstates a forgotten term slowly; a short reminder costs less than a search |
| shallow nesting | strengthen: one clause level per sentence | working memory is fully taken by new content |
Thresholds
[logical_lines]
trigger = 60 # shorter files, so each one holds one new ideaOpen questions
The fading schedule, meaning how many worked steps to remove each time, is not settled for written notes as opposed to tutoring.