Learning from multimedia and hypermedia

Computer-based multimedia and hypermedia resources (e.g., the world wide web) have become one of the primary sources of academic information for a majority of pupils and students. In line with this expansion in the field of education, the scientific study of learning from multimedia and hypermedia has become a very active field of research. In this chapter we provide a short overview with regard to research on learning with multimedia and hypermedia. In two review sections, we describe the educational benefits of multiple representations and of learner control, as these are the two defining characteristics of hypermedia. In a third review section we describe recent scientific trends in the field of multimedia/hypermedia learning. In all three review sections we will point to relevant European work on multimedia/hypermedia carried out within the last 5 years, and often carried out within the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence. According to the interdisciplinary nature of the field this work might come not only from psychology, but also from technology or pedagogy. Comparing the different research activities on multimedia and hypermedia that have dominated the international scientific discourse in the last decade reveals some important differences. Most important, a gap seems to exist between researchers mainly interested in a “serious” educational use of multimedia/ hypermedia and researchers mainly interested in “serious” experimental research on learning with multimedia/hypermedia. Recent discussions about the pros and cons of “design-based research” or “use-inspired basic research” can be seen as a direct consequence of an increasing awareness of the tensions within these two different cultures of research on education

Eye Movements Reflect Reasoning with Mental Images but Not with Mental Models in Orientation Knowledge Tasks

Abstract. This paper presents results showing that eye movements reflect spa-tial relations in mental images but not in mental models during nearly similar reasoning tasks with directions. These results contribute to the distinction between mental models and mental images based on eye movements. This dif-ferentiation may be applied in the field of human-computer interaction and in-telligent assistance systems. We conducted two experiments about reasoning with cardinal directions employing three-term series problems in the form of: “X is southwest of Z; Y is east of X; as seen from Z, where is Y? ” The results replicate, to some extent, previous findings about preferred mental models. Ad-ditionally, the results indicate that these preferences are susceptible to details of the instructions of the experiment.

Spatial Principles in Control of Focus in Reasoning with Mental Representations, Images, and Diagrams

The effective control of attentional focus is an essential requirement in mental reasoning based on mental models and mental images, as well as in the interaction with external diagrams. In this paper, we argue for spatial organization principles common to various mental subsystems that entail a noncentralistic control of focus. We give a brief overview of mental spatial reasoning and present a review of psychological findings related to cognitive control. We review existing modeling approaches that realize control of focus in imagery, scene recognition, and mental animation. Based on these foundations, we identify basic spatial organizing principles that are shared by the diverse subsystems collaborating in mental spatial reasoning. We discuss the implications of these principles in the framework of a computational modeling approach and give an outline of the conception of control of focus in our computational architecture Casimir