Personalized Wearable Guides or Audio Guides: An Evaluation of Personalized Museum Guides for Improving Learning Achievement and Cognitive Load

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to investigate the effects of incorporating personalized learning based on students’ learning styles (visual or verbal) into wearable or audio museum guides. Personalized learning is achieved by matching participants’ learning styles with either a wearable or an audio guide. The participants in this study consisted of 79 university students divided into four groups: audio guide-visual, audio guide-verbal, wearable guide-visual, and wearable guide-verbal. The students’ cognitive load (intrinsic, extraneous, and germane) and learning achievement (remembering, understanding, and analyzing) were assessed and compared. In this study, it was found that personalized learning helps to reduce students’ intrinsic cognitive load and extraneous cognitive load, while increasing their germane cognitive load and improving their ability to memorize. It is suggested that museum educators refer to our classification of learning styles, provide visitors with personalized devices, and incorporate wearable guide devices into their museums’ learning processes, in order to improve visitors’ learning achievement.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the staff from the Hsinchu City Military Dependents’ Village Museum, NCTU's ILTM (Interactive Learning Technology and Motivation, see: http://iltm.nctu.edu.tw) lab members, Sunny S. J. Lin and Catherine Harrington for their valuable suggestions, all of the reviewers for their useful comments, and the students who participated in this study, as well as Shih-Ching Yu, Yu-Chen Chen, Meng-Han Li, Chih-Ting Chen, Hsiu-Shan Lin, Hsueh-Er Tsai, Pei-Hsun Hsieh, Yi-Chuan Hsu, and Yu-Ling Chen for their assistance in conducting the experiment.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan through Grant numbers [MOST 107-2628-H-009-004-MY3, MOST 105-2511-S-009-013-MY5, MOST 104-3011-E-194-001-, and MOST 104-3011-E-194-002].

Notes on contributors

Jerry Chih-Yuan Sun

Jerry Chih-Yuan Sun is a Professor of eLearning in the institute of education at National Chiao Tung University where he leads the Interactive Learning Technology and Motivation Lab (see http://elearning-lab.nctu.edu.tw). His research focuses on assessing interactive feedback technologies and their effects on student learning and motivation.

Shih-Jou Yu

Shih-Jou Yu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Education at National Chiao Tung University. Her major research interests include wearable technologies, learning motivation, and personalized feedback for both formal and informal curricula.