Characterizing and influencing students' tendency to write self-explanations in online homework

In the context of online programming homework for a university course, we explore the extent to which learners engage with optional prompts to self -explain answers they choose for problems. Such prompts are known to benefit learning in laboratory and classroom settings [4], but there are less data about the extent to which students engage with them when they are optional additions to online homework. We report data from a deployment of self-explanation prompts in online programming homework, providing insight into how the frequency of writing explanations is correlated with different variables, such as how early students start homework, whether they got a problem correct, and how proficient they are in the language of instruction. We also report suggestive results from a randomized experiment comparing several methods for increasing the rate at which people write explanations, such as including more than one kind of prompt. These findings provide insight into promising dimensions to explore in understanding how real students may engage with prompts to explain answers.