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Equilibriating instructional media for cognitive styles

Published:30 June 2003Publication History

ABSTRACT

Two types of instructional (Text and Web) that had been used in a previous study [1] were adapted to accommodate Cognitive Style preferences for Witkin's Field-dependent [2] and Riding's Imager [3]. Ninety six Information Systems students were randomly allocated to each of these environments and their Cognitive Styles were assessed. The students studied an Introductory Course in Artificial Intelligence one hour per week for six weeks after which they were assessed by a one hour exam. It was found that Field-dependents and Field-independents performed similarly in both environments as indicated by their examination scores demonstrating the success of the adaption of both environments for Field-dependents. The adaptation for Imagers as measured by Riding's CSA [3] was not successful as Verbalisers performed better than Imagers in both Text and Web. This raises questions about the stability of Riding's Verbaliser/Imager dimension. People performed significantly better in the Text environment than in the Web environment.

References

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  1. Equilibriating instructional media for cognitive styles

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      D.C. Charles Hair

      The authors describe studies conducted to explore the effectiveness of structuring and presenting instructional information in ways that will accommodate learners with different cognitive styles. The studies were conducted with a group of third-year information systems students who attended seven hours of a course on artificial intelligence. The students were randomly divided into two groups. One group studied in a text environment, and the other studied in a Web environment. Performance was evaluated through a one-hour exam given at the end of the course. Cognitive styles are constructs used to classify an individual's means of organizing and processing information. The cognitive styles studied in these experiments were field dependence/field independence, verbalizer/imager, and wholist/analytic. Student subjects were administered the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) to classify them as field dependent or independent. They were also administered Riding's Cognitive Style Analysis in order to classify them as verbalizers or imagers, and wholist or analytic. The empirical results of the studies point to the basic conclusion that instructional environments can be designed to accommodate different cognitive styles. Other results indicated that verbalizers outperformed imagers in both text and Web environments, and that subjects with all cognitive styles did better in the text environment than the Web environment. This paper should be of interest to others doing research in the design of instructional media. The writing is clear, and there is a good reference list. Online Computing Reviews Service

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Conferences
        ITiCSE '03: Proceedings of the 8th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
        June 2003
        291 pages
        ISBN:1581136722
        DOI:10.1145/961511
        • cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
          ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 35, Issue 3
          Proceedings of the 8th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
          September 2003
          277 pages
          ISSN:0097-8418
          DOI:10.1145/961290
          Issue’s Table of Contents

        Copyright © 2003 ACM

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        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 30 June 2003

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