EXPLORING THE IMPACTS OF ANALOGIES ON COMPUTER HARDWARE

ABSTRACT

In the last few decades, analogy, which is considered as a special case for reasoning, has attracted a great deal of attention from cognitive scientists. Although analogy was rarely applied in previous decades, now it is often considered by educators and researchers as a strategy to provide creative solutions and poetic writing (Paris & Glynn, 2004). Today, teaching models through analogy are used in different fields successfully and found to be beneficial for unobservable phenomena (Trey & Khan, 2008). Moving from the findings of previous studies, this study aims to explore the effects of detailed analogies on students’ learning success in studying the working rationale and hardware components of the computer. 86 students in 1st and 2nd grades of Computer and instructional Technology Department volunteered to participate in the study. The sample was divided into two groups randomly: the control group who received the lectures without using analogies and the experimental group who were taught using detailed analogies. The data was collected through pre- and post-tests at the beginning and at the end of one academic term. The results of the analyses show that the students’ success was significantly higher for the group taught via detailed analogies. Considering the low number of studies conducted to identify the effects of analogies on computer sciences learning, the findings of this present study are supposed to contribute to other studies in the field.