Review by: Tillberg, Heather (2004-09-01)

This article by researchers at the University of Poitiers and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France outlines a research study to determine the effects of different content representations in hypermedia and whether variations in the presentation of the information in either a hierarchical, network map, or alphabetical list aids learners with low prior knowledge and high prior knowledge of the subject. This research is rooted in studies done about how learners comprehend traditional texts as well as more recent inquiries about textual representation online (hypertexts).

The research design in this study consisted of the testing of 47 native French speakers enrolled in psychology courses at three French universities. The sample is a weakness of the study, in that one cannot assume that the results can be generalized beyond people that would enroll in psychology courses. However, this weakness does not undercut the importance of the implications of the researcher’s findings and the importance of investigating this area further.

The study used seven short texts on social influence each dealing with the same themes and each text was organized into four paragraphs with a thematic title, an introduction to the topic, a short presentation of an experiment, and a discussion. Each text was exactly 138 words in length and had been critiqued for the same level of comprehension difficulty by a previous experiment and was presented using a hypertext system. Subjects were given a pre-test to assess their prior knowledge of the subject area to classify them as low prior knowledge (LK) or high prior knowledge (HK). Next they were introduced to the hypertext system with an unrelated task, and then given 20 minutes to read the required text about social influence. This aspect of the design, where students were demonstrated the system with an unrelated task is a convincing control for any newness of the system impacting the results of comprehension in the target task. As the students participated in this section of the study, they were given a multiple choice questionnaire which had 16 questions categorized according to their relevance to explicitly and implicitly stated facts in the text that related either directly to the text or to the larger situation (based on a framework devised by Hofman and van Oostendorp, 1999).

After the interaction with the hypertext, students were giving the Lefavrais reading test to measure reading ability and as an “intervening task,” suggesting that the researchers were focusing on longer-term retention. Finally, the students were asked to write a one-page summary of the seven social influence texts, complete a comprehension questionnaire, take a test to assess their basic computer interaction skills, and create their own concept map drawing for analysis.

The details of the methodology of the study and subsequent ANOVA analyses are very clear and thorough. The authors’ finding that organizing content in a hierarchical structure had a significant effect on LK students has tremendous relevance for designers of instructional materials and certainly warrants further investigation and confirmation.