Online discussions offer exciting potential for educational dialogue, but too often result in disjointed conversations with low levels of interactivity. One contributing cause is the traditional text-based interface, which presents posts in a long list, leaving students overwhelmed and without useful navigational cues. To address this problem, we…

Previous studies have shown that students learn better from an online lesson when a gesturing pedagogical agent is added (Mayer & DaPra, 2012; Wang, Li, Mayer, & Liu, 2018). The goal of this study is to pinpoint which aspect of a gesturing pedagogical agent causes an improvement in learning from an online lesson. College students learned…

The increasing use of emojis, digital images that can represent a word or feeling in a text or email, and the fact that they can be strung together to create a sentence with real and full meaning raises the question of whether they are creating a new language amongst technologically savvy youth, or devaluing existing language. There is however a…

This study is part of an ongoing research project examining middle school girls' attention to and interpretation of visual representations of DNA replication. Specifically, this research examined differences between two different versions of a multimedia presentation on DNA, where the second version of the presentation was redesigned as a result…

The current study investigated whether learning from dynamic and two presentation formats for static visualizations can be enhanced by means of cueing. One hundred and fifty university students were randomly assigned to six conditions, resulting from a 2x3-design, with cueing (with/without) and type of visualization (dynamic, static-sequential,…

Within the framework of cognitive learning theories, instructional design manipulations have primarily been investigated under tightly controlled laboratory conditions. We carried out two experiments, where the first experiment was conducted in a restricted system-paced setting and is therefore in line with the majority of empirical studies in the…

For this study, computer technology was used to teach attentional skills to six young children. Prior reinforcement histories of individual stimuli were manipulated to examine whether they are the variable that controls the features of compound cues to which young children attend. (RWB)

The effects of visual grouping strategies involving animated and static graphic presentations on learning were studied. Also studied was the ability of students to learn a scientific rule presented incidentally in an animated sequence in the hope of replicating results from previous research. A total of 39 fourth graders participated in an…

This examination of the effectiveness of various methods of cuing users to their location in a videotex information system used five different versions of an electronic edition of a college catalog: "simple" (no cues), "headers" (textual cues), "color" (color cues), "icons" (graphic cues), and…

The relative effectiveness of digital versus photographic images was examined with 96 college students as subjects. A 2x2 balanced factorial design was employed to test eight hypotheses. The four groups were (1) digitized black and white; (2) digitized pseudocolor; (3) photographic black and white; and (4) photographic realistic color. Findings…

Two computer assisted instruction programs tested the effects of plain and enhanced screen designs with or without information about those designs and task-type on time and learning. Subjects were 140 fourth grade students in Lincoln, Nebraska who had extensive prior experience with computers. The enhanced versions used headings, directive cues,…

This paper uses the Brunwik theory of probabilistic functionalism as the backdrop for discussion of interrelationships between the individual learner and the design of computer-assisted instruction (CAI). This Brunswik learning model depicts the acquisition of knowledge as governed by the proximity of various cues and distractions. It is also…