Verbal ability and structured navigation on learning with hypertext

Abstract

Verbal Ability and Structured Navigation on Learning with Hypertext Brenda Martinez-Papponi, M.S. (blmartin@unm.edu) Department of Psychology, 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161 Timothy E. Goldsmith, Ph.D. (gold@unm.edu) Department of Psychology, 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161 Abstract Learners bring their unique individual perceptions, preferences, and abilities to a learning situation. The effect of individual differences on learning depends in part on how the instructional system accommodates for these differences. The current study examined the role of individual differences and structured navigation in hypertext learning. It was predicted that learning outcome would depend on how well the hypertext design operates together with the learner’s individual attributes. Ninety-seven participants participated in one of four groups of a 2 X 2 between-subjects factorial design, which focused on the interaction between the levels of the navigation structure (unconstrained or expert constrained) and the levels of the participants' verbal ability (high or low). General support was found for the hypothesis. Overall, learners with high-verbal ability performed better on an unconstrained navigation structure than those with low-verbal ability; whereas in an expert-constrained navigation this difference between verbal ability levels was smaller. The results have implications for the design of hypertext-based learning systems. Keywords: Learning; Individual Differences; Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction; Knowledge Representation Introduction Reading hypertext can be seen as an interaction between the learner and the machine (Dillon, 1994). The learning outcome will depend on how well the hypertext design operates together with the reader’s individual attributes. Both design and individual differences will influence this interaction. The current study examined this interaction. In particular, how do learners’ verbal ability and navigational constraints affect learning from a hypertext system? In hypertext, learners control the order in which they receive information. Learners move between topics selecting their own learning sequencing. They may choose a sequence based on previous knowledge, personal styles, needs, or learning goals. Although flexibility and active participation may benefit learning (Bruner, 1990), such flexibility would seem to demand more cognitive resources and hence adversely affect comprehension. Therefore, hypertext requires a different balance of processing resources than does traditional text. This additional cognitive load is affected by the lack of coherence in a hyperdocument due to the responsibility of the learner to perform additional navigation among the units (Foltz, Individuals will bring a variety of resources to learning environments. High-verbal ability readers, in particular, are good at predicting the next word or words in text because of their prior knowledge (Massaro, 1989). High-verbal ability learners can also hold more verbal information in working memory and integrate that information into long-term memory more efficiently than low-verbal ability learners. Therefore, a high-verbal ability learner is not affected by text fragmentation as much a low-verbal ability learner. High-verbal ability learners are more likely to connect hypertext units together (i.e., organize and build internal connections) at the net-level, and are less likely to lose the coherence of the document. For this reason, high-verbal ability learners should have several advantages over low- verbal ability learner in a hypertext environment. If a learner has high-verbal ability, he/she will tend to have better comprehension skills in general and will be less affected by the lack of coherence in the material. Therefore, a hyperdocument that imposes a large amount of navigational and cognitive load on the learner will put learners with low-verbal ability at a disadvantage (Foltz, In particular, learners with low-verbal ability will have a greater amount of task interference from the additional task of navigating among the units, due to the possible lack of coherence among the units, and therefore have poorer comprehension. Since high-verbal ability learners comprehend text easily at the node-level, they may have more cognitive resources to devote to comprehending the organization of the document at the net-level. Specifically, they will have more resources to devote to navigating and so are less likely to become disoriented in a hypertext environment. In contrast, since low-verbal ability learners are less efficient at selecting, organizing and integrating information, their cognitive resources will be more easily depleted, and navigating choices will likely overwhelm