Technology-based learning environments
F. Kadkhodavand; A. Momeni rad
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Education and learning are based on correct communication and this communication is dependent on choosing the right media. Multimedia is one of the most effective media for learning due to its many advantages. But in some cases, despite spending a lot of time and cost on multimedia ...
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Background and Objectives: Education and learning are based on correct communication and this communication is dependent on choosing the right media. Multimedia is one of the most effective media for learning due to its many advantages. But in some cases, despite spending a lot of time and cost on multimedia design, the results are not satisfactory. Failure to pay attention to the principles of educational design, individual characteristics of learners, learning processes, and human cognitive structure in many cases leads to ineffective multimedia design and production that prevent learning. One of the influential theories on educational design is cognitive load theory. In poor designs, such as the effect of split attention, where complementary and essential information is not located near each other, it imposes an additional load on the memory and disrupts the processing and learning. As a result of the split attention due to the limited capacity of active memory, it is assumed that if the image and the related text are placed in the vicinity of each other, the cognitive processing of the two contents will be done at the same time and optimal cognitive resources will be consumed. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of split attention in multimedia on learning and the perceived cognitive load of students with self-regulation moderation.Methods: This research was practical in terms of purpose and in terms of method, it was quasi-experimental research with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of this research included all the female students of the third-grade primary schools in Hamedan in the academic year 2022-2023. In this research, Rah Noor 1 girls' primary school was selected using the available sampling method. Among 24 third-grade students, 12 were placed in the experimental group and 12 in the control group using random assignment. To determine the level of students' self-regulation, Buford’s (1995) self-regulation questionnaire was used. For education, the researcher made two educational multimedia, which included educational multimedia with the effect of dividing attention and educational multimedia without this effect. A week before the training, the learning pre-test was performed on the students of both groups. The students of both groups completed the PASS (1992) cognitive load (mental effort) scale in the middle and at the end of the training and immediately participated in the learning post-test. In this research, SPSS statistical software was used to provide descriptive statistics (dispersion and centrality indices) and inferential statistics (Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, ANCOVA, and independent t-test) for data analysis.Findings: The results showed that the control group performed better in the learning tests than the experimental group (split attention effect) and received less cognitive load. However, the findings indicated that self-regulation had no significant moderating role in learning and the perceived cognitive load of students who were under multimedia education with the effect of split attention.Conclusion: If the text and image information are integrated, there is less need to search and process. Therefore, less additional load is imposed on the memory and thus facilitates learning. Self-regulating students do not have the possibility of optimal processing without training appropriate strategies for processing non-optimal designs, because they face two types of additional load imposed on their memory.
E-Lerning
M. Abedin; E. Pazouki; R. Ebrahimpour
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Learning has consistently been one of the aspects of human development since the beginning of human existence on the Earth, encompassing all aspects of human life and holding a special place in human life plans. On the other hand, technological advancements in recent decades ...
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Background and Objectives: Learning has consistently been one of the aspects of human development since the beginning of human existence on the Earth, encompassing all aspects of human life and holding a special place in human life plans. On the other hand, technological advancements in recent decades have rapidly brought about significant changes in the realm of education and learning. One of the most prominent impacts of technological progress in the field of learning is the emergence of e-learning; a tool that enables learners to access educational resources at any time and place. Regarding the fact that every person has individual traits, preferences, and tendencies, traditional education's "one-size-fits-all" approach can be seen as one of its fundamental flaws. Learning styles, as one of the most important factors influencing learning, represent an individual's preferences and ways of processing and understanding information. Therefore, providing adaptive education based on learners' learning styles, with the aim of enhancing educational efficiency and reducing cognitive load during teaching, is both essential and inevitable. This research aimed to investigate the impact of adaptive education based on learners' learning styles. In order to achieve this, learners' learning styles were identified using an online platform and the Felder-Silverman Learning Style Indicator questionnaire, and educational content was automatically generated and presented to learners accordingly. Finally, the performance of the learners and cognitive load during instruction were examined.Methods: A total number of 37 male and female undergraduate computer science students with an average age of 20.3, participated in this study. Initially, the participants were divided into two groups, and their learning styles were determined using the Felder-Silverman Learning Style Indicator questionnaire. Subsequently, one group received educational content tailored to their learning styles, while the other group received content not aligned with their learning styles. After studying the provided material, the cognitive load and learning outcomes of the participants were assessed using the NASA Task Load Index questionnaire and a designed performance test, respectively. Finally, the significance level of the results obtained from the two groups was evaluated using an independent t-test.Findings: Based on the obtained results, no significant difference was observed in the test scores of the two groups' performance. However, when comparing the cognitive load between the two groups, the average cognitive load of the group that received content aligned with their learning style was significantly higher than the group that received incongruent content, with a value of 0.02 (p < 0.05).Conclusion: According to the research findings, providing educational content based on learners' learning styles significantly reduce cognitive load during learning. Therefore, offering personalized education based on learning styles plays a crucial role as one of the adaptive teaching methods in e-learning, enhancing performance, and reducing cognitive load for learners.
Educational Technology - Artificial Intelligence
M. Rezaei; E. Pazouki; R. Ebrahimpour
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Today, due to the increasing development of technology all over the world, e-learning systems are expanding rapidly. With the progress of electronic education, the movement from traditional education (the approach of providing one education for all) to personalized education ...
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Background and Objectives: Today, due to the increasing development of technology all over the world, e-learning systems are expanding rapidly. With the progress of electronic education, the movement from traditional education (the approach of providing one education for all) to personalized education began. Personalized education is an educational approach that aims to customize learning based on a learner's strengths, skills, interests, and needs. This method of education, like any other new method, has its strengths and weaknesses. In fact, increasing motivation and acquiring self-defense skills can be considered as one of the important benefits of this type of training. On the other hand, as the weaknesses of this method, we can mention the time-consuming training, the challenge in implementation, and the lack of clarity in the method of application. Due to the availability of many data from learners, the use of artificial intelligence to personalize education will both increase the quality and make education more attractive. Nowadays, one of the ways to personalize education is to provide it based on the preferences of learners. Learner preferences can be self-identified and explicitly identified and extracted by directly asking the learner or implicitly and collecting and monitoring data. Today, modeling user preferences is one of the most challenging tasks in e-learning systems that deal with a large amount of information. The aim of this research was to extract the implicit preferences of the learner by using an online interactive intelligent educational system that models the learner's preferences using conceptualization for learning objects through profile expansion and the use of artificial intelligence algorithms. The model was trained with the collected interactive data and provides new learning objects based on the learner's preferences. This research was practical in terms of purpose.Methods: In this research, according to the society available to us, 29 male and female undergraduate students of computer sciences, with an average age of 21.5 years, who had not taken the machine learning course, were included as the participants. After registration, the participants were randomly divided into two control and experimental groups. The experimental group was presented with personalized content that matched their preferences, and the control group was presented with content that did not match their preferences. After the training, the learning rate and cognitive load of the participants were measured by the designed performance test and the NASA workload index questionnaire. At the end, the significance level of the obtained results of the two groups was evaluated using the independent t-test.Findings: Based on the obtained results, the average performance test scores of the experimental group who received content matching their preferences had no significant difference compared to the average of the control group with a value of p=0.7 (while learning), but the cognition of the control group was significantly lower with p=0.00 compared to that of the experimental group.Conclusion: Based on the findings of the research, providing personalized educational content based on learners' preferences using the profile expansion technique significantly reduced the cognitive load during learning. So, Providing educational content based on learners' preferences, as one of the personalized educational methods in e-learning, plays an important role in reducing the cognitive load of learners.
E-Lerning
K. Latifzadeh; S. H. Amiri; A. Bosaghzadeh; M. Rahimi; R. Ebrahimpour
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Today, it is common to use multimedia in foreign language teaching. There are some principles for designing multimedia that would reduce task cognitive load. These principles are based on the cognitive load theory. The methods of cognitive load measurement are divided into ...
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Background and Objectives: Today, it is common to use multimedia in foreign language teaching. There are some principles for designing multimedia that would reduce task cognitive load. These principles are based on the cognitive load theory. The methods of cognitive load measurement are divided into two categories, namely the subjective and objective measurements. NASA-TLX is an example of the subjective measurements; methods such as electroencephalography and eye-tracking are among the objective measurements. Due to the advantages of objective measurements, using these methods is common in cognitive studies. Eye-tracking technology can record different eye-movements of humans such as pupil dilation, saccades, fixations, blinks and microsaccades with a high sampling rate. These measurements are being widely used in cognitive and mental workload studies. In this paper, the cognitive load in multimedia language learning has been evaluated, using eye-tracking data analysis. Methods: Two multimedia versions for teaching English were produced with the same narration and the length of 342s. In one version, the principles in designing multimedia were applied whereas in the other version, they were violated so that more cognitive load in comparison to the former version could be imposed. Ten subjects whose English listening comprehension was assessed with a simulation of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) participated in the experiment and were randomly divided into two equal groups of five. The two groups were homogeneous with respect to their listening proficiency. One group watched the multimedia without principles while the other group watched the multimedia with principles. Then, each individual answered 12 multiple choice questions about the concepts presented in the multimedia as a performance test. During watching the multimedia and taking the performance test, the participants’ eye movement data were recorded. Then, each person filled out the NASA-TLX Questionnaire. Based on the results of the performance test and the NASA-TLX, the difficulty level of the multimedia without principles as compared to its version with principles was evaluated. The collected data were divided into blocks of 30 seconds. Findings: Based on the NASA-TLX, the group who watched multimedia without principles experienced more cognitive load in comparison to the group who watched multimedia with principles, which approved our assumption about the higher load of the multimedia without principles. However, no significant difference was found in the results of the performance test between the two groups. According to statistical analyses, the pupil diameter, saccade length, saccade velocity, blink latency, and microsaccade amplitude in the multimedia blocks of both groups were significantly different. Nevertheless, no significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of the fixation time, the fixation rate, and the microsaccade rate. Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, pupil dilation, saccade length, saccade velocity, blink latency, and microsaccade amplitude have a significant relationship with the amount of the load imposed by the instructional multimedia which corresponds to the literature review of the study. Based on the results of this study, along with the subjective methods, eye movement data can also be considered as an appropriate tool for assessing the cognitive load imposed by multimedia learning and qualifying the multimedia instructional content. A significant difference was also found between the two groups in the study in terms of their blinking rate. More investigation and different experiments are needed for examining other eye movement criteria that have been investigated in this study, including fixation time, fixation rate, and microsaccade rate so that a more definitive conclusion would be reached regarding a significant relationship between these parameters and the mental load imposed by the multimedia English teaching.
Educational Technology
V. Salehi; B. Ghanbari
Abstract
Background and Objectives: With the increasing importance of instructional multimedia and the use of their interactive and unique features in the teaching-learning process, we are witnessing the design and production of this technology and its use in teaching courses and different levels of the educational ...
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Background and Objectives: With the increasing importance of instructional multimedia and the use of their interactive and unique features in the teaching-learning process, we are witnessing the design and production of this technology and its use in teaching courses and different levels of the educational system. Cognitive load theory, as one of the theories related to information processing, is one of the most effective theories in instructional design and an effective guide for designing multimedia and other instructional materials. The basic premise of this theory is that learners have very limited working memory capacity to process when facing with new information. The purpose of this theory is to predict learning outcomes by considering the capabilities and limitations of human cognitive structure. Cognitive load theory is based on the idea that the design of instructional materials should be based on our knowledge of how the human mind works. Based on this assumption, the various processes of acquiring knowledge and understanding are explained based on the load they place on the human cognitive system (which is an active system with limited information processing capacity). Because this theory links the design features of instructional materials to the principles of human cognitive processing, it can be used in a wide range of learning environments.The present study aimed to compare the effects of Merrill and Gagne's instructional design models on students' cognitive load, learning and instructional efficiency in Science lesson. Methods: The study was quasi-experimental with pretest and posttest design with two experimental and one control groups. The statistical population consisted of all male students of the sixth grade elementary school of Qazvin. The sample including three 30 students’ classes were selected through convenience sampling procedure and the classes randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The materials and instruments included instructional multimedia contents, learning tests, and cognitive load assessment scale. The first experimental group studied the multimedia based on the Merrill model, the second group studied the multimedia based on the Gagne model and the control group studied non-model multimedia. Data were analyzed by using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Findings: The results of the study showed that multimedia based on the Merrill instructional design model compared to multimedia based on Gagne instructional design model and non-model multimedia, has led to less cognitive load, more learning and instructional efficiency. Also, multimedia based on Gagne's instructional design model compared to non-model multimedia led to less cognitive load, more learning and instructional efficiency. Conclusion: One of the concerns of educational designers in the process of designing the content of multimedia educational materials and other learning materials has always been focused on the appropriate selection of instructional design models. Since there are different models for instructional design of learning materials, to choose a suitable model, one should rely on theoretical foundations and the results of research conducted in various theoretical areas, including cognitive load theory. According to the findings of this study, it is suggested that in order to reduce the cognitive load and increase students’ learning, Merrill instructional design model would be used in designing instructional multimedia content.
