Psychology of Learning with Digital Media, Faculty of Humanities, Chemnitz University of Technology, Straße der Nationen 12, 09111, Chemnitz, Germany.
Cogn Process. 2021 May;22(2):209-225. doi: 10.1007/s10339-020-01002-5. Epub 2020 Oct 27.
Text-based learning media are often used in primary, secondary and university education. Therefore, text designers can support the learner by highlighting the most relevant information by using visual cues. Despite this signaling effect's broad empirical basis, the extent to which the effectiveness of educational signals is dependent on moderator variables, like the design and layout of the text has not been investigated to date. In the current experiment, 138 university students learned about the formation of tsunamis from an instructional text. The text was manipulated in terms of signaling (color cues vs. no color cues) and induced learning-irrelevant extraneous cognitive load (fluent text font vs. disfluent text font). The results revealed that learners who had received the signaled text outperformed those who received the non-signaled text in terms of transfer performance. These results are explained by cognitive load, which was reduced in the signaling condition. The text font had no influence on the learning outcomes. Extraneous load induction further led to higher metacognitive accuracy and invested effort, while cognitive load and frustration were also increased. Interaction effects only occurred in terms of testing time, ease of learning and navigation. Results indicate that signaling is beneficial for transfer performance, independent of the font design of text.
基于文本的学习媒体常用于小学、中学和大学教育。因此，文本设计师可以通过使用视觉线索突出显示最相关的信息来支持学习者。尽管这种信号效应有广泛的经验基础，但到目前为止，教育信号的有效性在多大程度上取决于调节变量，如文本的设计和布局，尚未得到调查。在当前的实验中，138 名大学生从教学文本中学习海啸的形成。文本在信号（颜色提示与无颜色提示）和诱导学习无关的额外认知负荷（流畅的文本字体与不流畅的文本字体）方面进行了操作。结果表明，在迁移表现方面，接收到有信号文本的学习者优于接收到无信号文本的学习者。这些结果可以用认知负荷来解释，在有信号的情况下，认知负荷降低了。文本字体对学习结果没有影响。额外的负荷诱导进一步导致更高的元认知准确性和投入的努力，同时也增加了认知负荷和挫折感。仅在测试时间、学习和导航的易用性方面存在交互作用。结果表明，信号对于迁移表现是有益的，而与文本的字体设计无关。
