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Article Excerpt
This study investigated the effects of learning materials with
different interaction levels on achievement and motivational perceptions of college students in a web-based learning environment with a posttest only experimental design. There were three groups in this study: control group, reactive interaction group, and proactive interaction group. The control group received a treatment with static hyperlinks to the learning content; the reactive interaction group received a treatment that was implemented with elaborated immediate feedback; the proactive interaction group received a treatment that required generative activity. Three instruments were used to evaluate the effects of different treatments: an achievement test, an instructional material motivation survey, and an interview. The subjects in the study were college students in various education majors. The results indicated that students in both the reactive and proactive interaction groups outperformed those in the control group on the achievement test. The students in the reactive interaction group demonstrated significantly higher motivational perceptions toward the instructional material than those in the control group. The qualitative data also supported these results.
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Jl. of Interactive Learning Research (2003) 14(4), 367-386
Distance learning refers to any instruction through print or electronic communication media for people involved in learning in a place or time different from that of the instructor(s) or other student(s). It has many formats, from the oldest correspondence courses, audio, one-way video, two-way video, to the World Wide Web (WWW or Web). Among those, the Web is the fastest growing. It provides a pervasive new channel for education that makes education more accessible. It appeals to students, provides for flexible learning, and enables new ways of learning (Owston, 1997). Like other kinds of distance learning, it is widely believed that interaction is one of the important and fundamental factors that affect students' learning and attitudes in web-based learning (Berge, 1999; Gilbert & Moore, 1998; Moore, 1989).
Interaction is a two-way communication process. From the learner's perspective, there are three types of interaction involved in the process of learning: (a) interaction with content, (b) interaction with instructor, and (c) interaction with other students (Moore, 1989). Each type of interaction can have different effects on student achievement and attitude toward learning. From the perspective of learning, it can be argued that the most important interaction occurs between the student and the material he/she is trying to acquire or master. Milheim (1996) pointed out that interactivity between the computer and the learner is one of the most important attributes in computer based instruction because it directly impacts the communication between the educational materials and the intended learners.
Based on the quality of interaction, the student-content interaction can range from low to high levels. In low-level interaction, there is less interactivity, engagement, and cognitive processing. There is more interactivity, elaboration, and cognitive processing in high-level interaction.
Schwier and Misanchuk's (1993) identified interaction levels provide a useful starting point for developing and understanding interaction. They suggested that there were at least three levels of interaction based on the instructional quality of the interaction: reactive, proactive, and mutual interactions.
Although proposed for traditional multimedia, this categorization scheme also applies to web-based learning environments. Web-based learning is popular and growing rapidly. But people still have many concerns about web delivered courses (Windschitl, 1998). One of these concerns involves building interactivity into web courses (Gilbert & Moore, 1998). Web-based instruction (WBI) can provide all types of interaction proposed by Moore (1989) through different means. For the student-content interaction, WBI can provide many levels of interaction between the learner and the learning content. However, in reality, most web-based instructional materials only provide hyperlink interactivity, which is the primary mechanism of hypermedia. The interaction level provided by hyperlinks is low. This low level of interaction may not promote students' learning and motivation. Therefore, it appears necessary to explore more strategies to increase the interaction of WBI so that students will engage more actively with the learning content, and web-based learning will be more attractive to learners.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Few studies have focused on effects of different interaction levels in web-based learning environments. But a number of studies on feedback and generative learning have been done on interaction in computer-based instruction environments. These results have valuable implications for web-based learning. In this section, research on interaction, generative activities, and feedback are discussed.
Interaction
In the literature, the terms interaction and interactivity are used interchangeably to refer to the communication between student and subject content, student and instructor, or student and student. There are two perspectives on interaction: quantitative and qualitative (Hannafin, 1989). A quantitative view of interaction refers to external factors such as response frequency or interval, or the number of questions embedded during an instructional module. A qualitative view of interaction substantially emphasizes the learner's role in mediating interaction. The concern here is how to foster cognitive engagement--the intentional and purposeful processing of lesson content.
Although the interaction is very important and necessary for education, it appears that there is no consensus of what interactivity actually represents or involves. Even so, over the past years there have been a number of attempts to identify levels of interaction, with the underlying assumption that the higher the level, the better the product (Sims, 1997). Schwier and Misanchuk (1993) introduced a descriptive taxonomy of multimedia interaction based on the qualitative nature of interaction. It includes three dimensions: (a) levels of interaction, (b) functions played by interaction in each level, and (c) transactions at each level of interaction. Three levels of interaction are: reactive, proactive, and mutual, where:
* "A reactive interaction is a response to presented stimuli, or an answer to a given question;
* Proactive interaction emphasizes learner construction and generative activity. The learner goes beyond selecting or responding to existing structures and begins to generate unique constructions and elaborations beyond designer-imposed limits; and
* Mutual interactivity would be characterized by an artificial intelligence or virtual reality design, where the learner becomes a fully franchised citizen in the instructional environment. In such a program, the learner and system are mutually adaptive, that is, capable of changing in reaction to encounters with the others (p. 11-12).
The relationships among the three levels are hierarchical in terms of quality of interaction. That means the quality of a mutual level interaction is higher than that of a proactive level and the quality of a proactive level interaction is higher than that of a reactive level interaction because there is greater opportunity for mental engagement and learner investment at higher levels of interaction than lower (Schwier & Misanchuk, 1993).
Very few studies have focused on the effects of different interaction levels on learners' achievement and attitudes based on Schwier and Misanchuk's classification. However a...
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