Effects of text, audio/video, and still images as asynchronous instructional delivery methods upon cognition and satisfaction of high school agricultural science students
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Abstract
The development of electronic curriculum materials holds great promise and great rewards for educators and learners alike, but little research has been conducted to determine the effectiveness of incorporating multimedia components within a electronically delivered unit of instruction. This dissertation tested the theory of cue-summation (multiple cues across multiple channels) in a high school agricultural education setting and measured the effectiveness of the instruction as well as student satisfaction and delivery method interaction with learning style.
Curriculum materials were created and placed on CD-ROM for asynchronous delivery capability. Materials comprised a week-long unit of instruction on milk processing and were developed in three treatments. The first treatment consisted of text-only materials, the second consisted of text and an audio/video component and the third consisted of audio/video and still images. These three treatments represented: single cue, redundancy, and cue summation, respectively.
One hundred five high school agriculture science students participated in the study. Instrumentation used included a pretest/posttest for cognition, Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) for learning style, and a researcher developed satisfaction instrument. Data were collected in the fall of 2003 and analyzed using ANOVA techniques to determine significant differences among the treatment groups.
The researcher found that students scored significantly higher on the posttest when exposed to treatments containing an audio/video component, but significantly preferred treatment three (cue-summation) over treatment two (redundancy). It was also determined that learning style as measured by the GEFT produced no significant interaction effect on student performance. Recommendations include continued research as well as incorporating these findings into current curriculum development efforts for the betterment of the learners involved. Cue-summation produced student performance scores similar to redundancy but students were significantly more satisfied with the unit developed using cue-summation; therefore, the researcher recommends cue-summation be considered when developing electronic curriculum.