Multimedia as a Cognitive Tool

7.3. Results

Each student’s score is added up in the two parts and then students are divided along a median split into two
groups. Those who score high in this test are considered as ‘holists’ and have a higher ability to visualize
objects while those who score low in this test are considered as ‘serialists’. This is exactly the same
categorization procedure followed by Monaghan and Stenning (1998).

Following this procedure student results in the pre and post-tests were grouped according to their spatial ability
test results only amended to have an equal number of students in each group. These results were then compared
to each other with respect to the percentage of improvement as is shown in table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of results with respect to the percentage of improvement

Results indicate that although the group was indeed composed of students with different learning preferences,
they all achieved comparable overall improvements in learning. Notice though the difference in the degree in
learning in Q4 four. The question is: List and explain the data variables that are associated with the stack
and needed to operate on it? This particular question is clearly closer to heart to the Serialists Group than to
the Holists group, therefore it should not be surprising that they find it much easier to learn how to describe the
data variables that would students who likes to see the stack in operation. Another point to ponder on is that the
Holists group made a bigger improvement in the Q1+Q8 group, which is the question: Using an example,
explain the stack concept and its possible use? Which clearly is closer to a holist’s heart than it would be to a
serialist.

The results shown above further support the claims made by Mohaghan and Stenning (1998) that learner
differences do indeed affect learning performance of students as is shown in the comparison between
improvement levels above. Yet these results also show that the system presented here, does indeed account for
these differences.

8. Conclusion

It seems that the system presented was able to utilize multimedia as a cognitive tool capable of resulting in a
significant improvement in learning with both holists and serialists. If we ponder the causes of these results we
find that the system presents the educational material through animation and textual representation
simultaneously. Holists are customarily described as students with a strong visual ability (Monaghan and
Stenning, 1998). This implies that this group learns more readily from a graphical or animated representation.
On the other hand of the scope, serialists are reported to learn best with verbal representation. Therefore, the
combination of both media allowed students with either of the above strength to learn from the same system.

So what is the role of the second media that is available? Does it hinder learning, stand idle, or fortify learning?
Clearly an improvement of 40% eliminates the first possibility because learning achieved in uni-media settings
did not achieve this percentage of improvement. But if we wish to assume that it is capable of it, we can go on
to note that the animation part did not include full names and descriptions of the objects shown. Yet, students
were capable of verbalizing their answers to show that they benefited from the verbal descriptions in the system.
This would not happen if the verbal representations were not read and understood by the holist group.

This discussion seems to point at one main conclusion; which is that the provision of the second media results in
a positive fortification of learning especially within the domain of Data Structures and this effect did not interact
with student preferences as both groups exhibited the same effect. This makes multimedia an ideal candidate as
a cognitive tool.

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