A Longitudinal Study on the Effect of Hypermedia on Learning Dimensions, Culture and Teaching Evaluation

Earlier studies have found the effectiveness of hypermedia systems as learning tools heavily depend on their compatibility with the cognitive processes by which students perceive, understand and learn from complex information\ud sources. Hence, a learner’s cognitive style plays a significant role in determining how much is learned from a hypermedia learning system. A longitudinal study of Australian and Malaysian students was conducted over two semesters in 2008. Five types of predictor variables were investigated with cognitive style: (i) learning dimensions (nonlinear learning, learner control, multiple tools); (ii)\ud culture dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, long/short term orientation); (iii) evaluation of units; (iv) student demographics; and (v) country in which students studied. This study uses both multiple linear regression and linear mixed effects to model the relationships among the variables. The results from this study support the findings of a cross-sectional study conducted by Lee et al. (2010); in particular, the predictor variables are significant to determine students’ cognitive style

Reviews

Brian Clegg, Mining The Internet — Information Gathering and Research on the Net, Kogan Page: London, 1999. ISBN: 0–7494–3025–7. Paperback, 147 pages, £9.99

What is the problem to which interactive multimedia is the solution?

This is something of an unusual paper. It serves as both the reason for and the result of a small number of leading academics in the field, coming together to focus on the question that serves as the title to this paper: What is the problem to which interactive multimedia is the solution? Each of the authors addresses this question from their own viewpoint, offering informed insights into the development, implementation and evaluation of multimedia. The result of their collective work was also the focus of a Western Australian Institute of Educational Research seminar, convened at Edith Cowan University on 18 October, 1994. The question posed is deliberately rhetorical - it is asked to allow those represented here to consider what they think are the significant issues in the fast-growing field of multimedia. More directly, the question is also asked here because nobody else has considered it worth asking: for many multimedia is done because it is technically possible, not because it offers anything that is of value or provides the solution to a particular problem. The question, then, is answered in various ways by each of the authors involved and each, in their own way, consider a range of fundamental issues concerning the nature, place and use of multimedia - both in education and in society generally. By way of an introduction, the following provides a unifying context for the various contributions made here

Courseware in academic library user education: A literature review from the GAELS Joint Electronic Library Project

The use of courseware for information skills teaching in academic libraries has been growing for a number of years. In order to create effective courseware packages to support joint electronic library activity at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, the GAELS project conducted a literature review of the subject. This review discovered a range of factors common to successful library courseware implementations, such as the need for practitioners to feel a sense of ownership of the medium, a need for courseware customization to local information environments, and an emphasis on training packages for large bodies of undergraduates. However, we also noted underdeveloped aspects worthy of further attention, such as treatment of pedagogic issues in library computer‐aided learning (CAL) implementations and use of hypertextual learning materials for more advanced information skills training. We describe how these findings shaped the packages produced by the project and suggest ways forward for similar types of implementation

Courseware in academic library user education: a literature review from the GAELS Joint Electronic Library project

The use of courseware for information skills teaching in academic libraries has been growing for a number of years. The GAELS project was required to create a set of learning materials to support Joint Electronic Library activity at Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities and conducted a literature review of the subject. This review discovered a range of factors common to successful library courseware implementations, such as the need for practitioners to feel a sense of ownership of the medium, a need for courseware customization to local information environments, and an emphasis on training packages for large bodies of undergraduates. However, we also noted underdeveloped aspects worthy of further attention, such as treatment of pedagogic issues in library CAL implementations and use of hypertextual learning materials for more advanced information skills training. We suggest ways of improving library teaching practice and further areas of research

Reviews

Teaching and Learning Materials and the Internet by Ian Forsyth, London: Kogan Page, 1996. ISBN: 0–7494‐ 20596. 181 pages, paperback. £18.99

Survey of data mining approaches to user modeling for adaptive hypermedia

The ability of an adaptive hypermedia system to create tailored environments depends mainly on the amount and accuracy of information stored in each user model. Some of the difficulties that user modeling faces are the amount of data available to create user models, the adequacy of the data, the noise within that data, and the necessity of capturing the imprecise nature of human behavior. Data mining and machine learning techniques have the ability to handle large amounts of data and to process uncertainty. These characteristics make these techniques suitable for automatic generation of user models that simulate human decision making. This paper surveys different data mining techniques that can be used to efficiently and accurately capture user behavior. The paper also presents guidelines that show which techniques may be used more efficiently according to the task implemented by the applicatio

Reviews

Technology‐based Learning Environments: Psychological and Educational Foundations edited by S. Vosniadou, E. De Corte and H. Mandl, volume 137 in NATO ASI Series F (Computer and Systems Sciences), Berlin, Springer‐Verlag, ISBN: 0–387–58253–3, 1994

A vignette model for distributed teaching and learning

Computer software and telecommunication technologies are being assimilated into the education sector. At a slower pace, educational methodologies have been evolving and gradually adopted by educators. The widespread and rapid assimilation of technology may be outstripping the uptake of better pedagogical strategies. Non‐pedagogical development of content could lead to the development of legacy systems that constrain future developments. Problems have arisen with computer‐based learning (CBL) materials, such as the lack of uptake of monolithic programmes that cannot be easily changed to keep pace with natural progress or the different requirements of different teachers and institutions. Also, hypertext/hypermedia learning environments have limitations in that following predefined paths is no more interactive than page turning. These considerations require a flexible and dynamic approach for the benefit of both the teacher and student. Courses may be constructed from vignettes to meet a desired purpose and to avoid the problems of adoption for the reasons that programmes cannot easily be changed or are not designed to meet particular needs. Vignettes are small, first‐principle, first‐person, heuristic activities (which are mimetic) from which courses can be constructed Vignettes use an object‐orientated approach to the development of computer‐based learning materials. Vignettes are objects that can be manipulated via a property sheet, which enables changing the object's inherent character or behaviour. A vignette object can interact with other vignette objects to create more complex educational interactions or models. The vignette approach leads to a development concept that is horizontally distributed across disciplines rather than vertically limited to single subjects

Designing a training tool for imaging mental models

The training process can be conceptualized as the student acquiring an evolutionary sequence of classification-problem solving mental models. For example a physician learns (1) classification systems for patient symptoms, diagnostic procedures, diseases, and therapeutic interventions and (2) interrelationships among these classifications (e.g., how to use diagnostic procedures to collect data about a patient's symptoms in order to identify the disease so that therapeutic measures can be taken. This project developed functional specifications for a computer-based tool, Mental Link, that allows the evaluative imaging of such mental models. The fundamental design approach underlying this representational medium is traversal of virtual cognition space. Typically intangible cognitive entities and links among them are visible as a three-dimensional web that represents a knowledge structure. The tool has a high degree of flexibility and customizability to allow extension to other types of uses, such a front-end to an intelligent tutoring system, knowledge base, hypermedia system, or semantic network