The Effectiveness of Instructional Design in Hypertext Environment Through the Internet

Abstract

The between-subjects factors were prior knowledge and task order. The within-subject factor was text organization. The major dependent measures were recall and comprehension test scores, as well as responses to surveys on students' attitudes toward the experimental treatment and learning the subject matter. Analysis of the test scores revealed that high prior knowledge students comprehended significantly better than low prior knowledge students when they read the Bottom-Up organization of text as the first task and the Top-Down organization as the second task. In contrast, students reading the Bottom-Up organization as the first task showed more favorable attitudes for learning subject matter than the students reading the Top-Down organization as the second task. However, the important result was the significant main effect, and interaction effect of text organization, prior knowledge, and task order on the comprehension measure.