The guiding process in discovery hypertext learning environments for the Internet

Hypertext is the dominant method to navigate the Internet, providing user freedom and control over navigational behaviour. There has been an increase in converting existing educational material into Internet web pages but weaknesses have been identified in current WWW learning systems. There is a lack of conceptual support for learning from hypertext, navigational disorientation and cognitive overload. This implies the need for an established pedagogical approach to developing the web as a teaching and learning medium. Guided Discovery Learning is proposed as an educational pedagogy suitable for supporting WWW learning. The hypothesis is that a guided discovery environment will produce greater gains in learning and satisfaction, than a non-adaptive hypertext environment. A second hypothesis is that combining concept maps with this specific educational paradigm will provide cognitive support. The third hypothesis is that student learning styles will not influence learning outcome or user satisfaction. Thus, providing evidence that the guided discovery learning paradigm can be used for many types of learning styles. This was investigated by the building of a guided discovery system and a framework devised for assessing teaching styles. The system provided varying discovery steps, guided advice, individualistic system instruction and navigational control. An 84 subject experiment compared a Guided discovery condition, a Map-only condition and an Unguided condition. Subjects were subdivided according to learning styles, with measures for learning outcome and user satisfaction. The results indicate that providing guidance will result in a significant increase in level of learning. Guided discovery condition subjects, regardless of learning styles, experienced levels of satisfaction comparable to those in the other conditions. The concept mapping tool did not appear to affect learning outcome or user satisfaction. The conclusion was that using a particular approach to guidance would result in a more supportive environment for learning. This research contributes to the need for a better understanding of the pedagogic design that should be incorporated into WWW learning environments, with a recommendation for a guided discovery approach to alleviate major hypertext and WWW issues for distance learning

Effects of planning on task load, knowledge, and tool preference:A comparison of two tools

Self-regulated learners are expected to plan their own learning. Because planning is a complex task, it is not self-evident that all learners can perform this task successfully. In this study, we examined the effects of two planning support tools on the quality of created plans, planning behavior, task load, and acquired knowledge. Sixty-five participants each worked with two versions of a planning tool. In one version, learning plans were actively constructed by the learners themselves; the other version provided learners with an adaptable computer-generated plan. The results indicated that the quality of learner-created plans was lower than computer-generated plans. Furthermore, participants reported a higher task load when they constructed the plans by themselves. However, participants gained more structural knowledge about the learning domain when they actively created plans. There was not an apparent preference for one of the tools if participants were to create a plan for someone else. However, if they were to use the plan for their own learning, participants preferred to actively create their own plans

ADOLESCENTS' CONSTRUCTIVELY RESPONSIVE READING STRATEGY USE IN A CRITICAL INTERNET READING TASK

The goal of this study was to examine types and patterns of reading strategies that proficient adolescent readers used while reading on the Internet. Informed by research related to reading comprehension, intertextuality, and new literacies, I drew upon the model of Constructively Responsive Reading that had evolved from print reading to Internet reading (Afflerbach & Cho, 2009; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). The model offered an analytical tool to construct descriptions of the complexity of use of the four general types of strategies in Internet contexts: Realizing and Constructing Potential Texts to Read, Identifying and Learning Text Content, Monitoring, and Evaluation. Seven highly proficient adolescent readers (Mean Age = 17.5) individually performed Internet reading, with a goal to create a critical question about their self- selected controversial topic across two 45-minute sessions: Open Website Searching and Focused Website Learning. I used multiple sources to triangulate complementary data to infer participants' Internet reading strategy use. Participants' think-aloud verbal reports were synchronized with their reader-computer interactions recorded in the computer. These real-time strategy data were complemented by other contextual data (e.g., pre-/post-reading interviews, participant-generated critical questions). I integrated these data into Internet Reading Strategy Matrices of the individual participants, which were analyzed, both qualitatively and quantitatively. During the entire course of data analysis, I constantly referenced the model of Constructively Responsive Reading with the four strategy categories. My data analyses afforded detailed descriptions of diverse constructively responsive reading strategies in Internet contexts and dynamic patterns of such reading strategy use. Grounded-analysis of data resulted in the identification of an array of reading strategies and many instances of strategy interplay among the four strategy categories. Chi-squared analysis of aggregated strategy data revealed the goal-directed nature of strategy use, as participants' use of these four types of strategies was associated with two different session tasks. Also, analysis of the processing chains visualizing the flow of strategy use indicated differences in the performances of Internet reading strategy use among the participants and their distinctive modes of Internet reading. Overall, my study supported the theoretical model of Constructively Responsive Reading, with empirical data that described diversity and patterns of constructively responsive reading strategies in Internet contexts. The complexity of Internet reading was discussed with regard to constructively responsive reading that coordinates different roles and functions of the four general types of strategies

An Exploration of How Health Professionals Create eHealth and mHealth Education Interventions

The purpose of this study was to explore how health education professionals create ehealth and mhealth education interventions. Three research questions led this qualitative study. The first research question focused on the use of learning theories, instructional models, and instructional design models. The second research question focused on the use of elearning and mlearning design principles. The third research question focused on the use of health behavior theories and models. Twelve health professionals selected for their involvement in the creation of ehealth and mhealth education interventions participated in this study. The themes emerging from the research questions showed a variability in how the participants used education theories and models, principles of elearning and mlearning design, and health behavior and health education theories and models to create ehealth and mhealth interventions. On education theories and models, the participants used elements of instructional design (i.e., analysis, design, evaluation) but did not use any specific instructional design model. Moreover, they invested efforts in creating instructional strategies that reflected instructional models of different learning theories but did not specify particular models or theories. Four themes emerged on the instructional strategies they used in the interventions: (1) connections to behaviorist approaches to learning, (2) connections to cognitivist approaches to learning, (3) connections to constructivist approaches to learning, and (4) unspecified learning theories. On the use of elearning design principles, seven patterns emerged: (1) interaction, (2) learner control, (3) provision of help, (4) use of multimedia, (5) engagement, (6) user friendliness, and (7) visual appeal. On the use of health behavior theories and models, three themes emerged (1) no use of health behavior theory or model, (2) use of a mix of health behavior theories or models, and (3) use of a particular health behavior theory or model. The variability of the findings and the resulting themes suggested implications for practice and further research. These implications concern all health professionals creating ehealth and mhealth interventions as well as scholars in the field of instructional design and health education and heath behavior. The implications and limitations of the study were also discussed

Bimodal adaptive hypermedia and interactive multimedia a web-based learning environment based on Kolb's theory of learning style

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Using the organizational and narrative thread structures in an e-book to support comprehension.

Stories, themes, concepts and references are organized structurally and purposefully in most books. A person reading a book needs to understand themes and concepts within the context. Schanks Dynamic Memory theory suggested that building on existing memory structures is essential to cognition and learning. Pirolli and Card emphasized the need to provide people with an independent and improved ability to access and understand information in their information seeking activities. Through a review of users reading behaviours and of existing e-Book user interfaces, we found that current e-Book browsers provide minimal support for comprehending the content of large and complex books. Readers of an e-Book need user interfaces that present and relate the organizational and narrative structures, and moreover, reveal the thematic structures. This thesis addresses the problem of providing readers with effective scaffolding of multiple structures of an e-Book in the user interface to support reading for comprehension. Recognising a story or topic as the basic unit in a book, we developed novel story segmentation techniques for discovering narrative segments, and adapted story linking techniques for linking narrative threads in semi-structured linear texts of an e-Book. We then designed an e-Book user interface to present the complex structures of the e-Book, as well as to assist the reader to discover these structures. We designed and developed evaluation methodologies to investigate reading and comprehension in e-Books, in order to assess the effectiveness of this user interface. We designed semi-directed reading tasks using a Story-Theme Map, and a set of corresponding measurements for the answers. We conducted user evaluations with book readers. Participants were asked to read stories, to browse and link related stories, and to identify major themes of stories in an e-Book. This thesis reports the experimental design and results in detail. The results confirmed that the e-Book interface helped readers perform reading tasks more effectively. The most important and interesting finding is that the interface proved to be more helpful to novice readers who had little background knowledge of the book. In addition, each component that supported the user interface was evaluated separately in a laboratory setting and, these results too are reported in the thesis

Separation of educational and technical content in educational hypermedia

The creation and development of educational hypermedia by teachers and educational staff is often limited by their lack of computing skills, time and support from the educational institutions. Especially the lack of computing skills is a hinderance to most of today’s educational experts. The problem is to find out how those educational experts could be supported by computer based tools which are tailored especially to their needs without having any technical limitations. In this study the separation of technical and educational content in educational hypermedia is examined as a solution to this problem. The main hypothesis of this study is that the separation of technical and educational content is possible if it is based on a fine-grained structure of different teaching and learning strategies and their conversion into an authoring tool. Such an authoring tool would make the creation of educational hypermedia very easy for teachers and therefore enable them to overcome the existing obstacles. The development of a new model, the creation of a new XML language and the implementation of a new authoring tool form the basis for a detailed investigation. The investigation was done by undertaking several research tasks like the evaluation of the XML language and the authoring tool by a group of educational experts of different knowledge domains, the practical usage of the authoring tool for the creation of real-life based educational material and the analysis of the gained research results. The analysis of the qualitative data showed that the separation of educational and technical content in educational hypermedia is possible and that it can be applied by educational experts with low computing skills as well as by technical experts with no educational background. Furthermore, the analysis allowed some additional insights into the creation of educational material by teachers and how it can be improved. The main conclusion of this study is that authoring tools in educational hypermedia should use the separation of educational and technical content based on different teaching and learning strategies which allows educational experts with low computing skills to create educational content for delivery via the World Wide Web

Navigation and learning in electronic text - Volume 1

Electronic texts are an essential component of many e-Leaming environments and previous research has shown that the type of navigation aid employed has a significant impact upon the quality of learning with such texts. This thesis provides a rich insight into the types of navigation aids that are most effective in educational electronic texts and extends previous research in this area by means of theoretical and empirical investigations. A comprehensive framework of constructivism and navigation is presented that describes key themes in constructivism and implications of these themes for navigation aids in educational electronic texts. This framework is used to formulate hypotheses about navigation aids and learning, and a subset of these hypotheses is then selected for further investigation. The selected hypotheses build on previous empirical research on navigation and learning and concern the effects of navigational freedom (the degree of choice a learner has in deciding which page to visit in an electronic text) and the effects of a novel approach to navigation: allowing learners to create their own navigation aids. Two experimental studies test these hypotheses and a third then extends the research. Experiment 1 investigates the effects on learning of the level of navigational freedom offered by a navigation aid. Experiment 2 investigates the effects on learning of allowing the learner to create their own navigation aids. The findings from these experiments indicate that navigational freedom and allowing learners to create their own navigation aids have little or negative impact on learning. Experiment 3 extends the work in experiment 2 by examining the effects on learning of allowing learners to adapt existing navigation aids, and focuses in particular on adapting maps. The findings indicate that allowing learners to adapt maps has benefits for some aspects of learning, cognitive load and usability. There are four main contributions of the thesis that may be used to inform future research on navigation and learning. Firstly, the framework of constructivism provides a broad context for investigations into the effects of navigation aids on learning. Secondly, three in depth experimental studies are presented. Thirdly, detailed analyses of the experimental data are conducted. Finally, the results of these analyses are distilled into a set of practical implications that can be used to inform designers and researchers of educational electronic texts