A Multifactor Analysis of the Instructional Effectiveness of Self‐Paced Visualized Instruction on Different Educational Objectives

Abstract

This experiment was designed to evaluate (a) the instructional effectiveness of questions in facilitating student achievement of different educational objectives when programmed instructional units are complemented by visuals containing different amounts of realistic detail, and (b) the degree to which students’ reading comprehension level influences their ability to profit from visualized instruction. Three hundred and thirty‐two students at The Pennsylvania State University were randomly assigned to both a presentation method and an instructional treatment. Each student received a reading comprehension pre‐test, participated in his/her respective programmed unit and received four individual criterion measures. The results of this study indicated that (a) different methods of presenting programmed instruction are not equally effective in facilitating student achievement of all types of educational objectives, (b) different types of visualization, used to complement programmed instruction, are not equally effective in facilitating student achievement of different educational objectives, (c) on most educational objectives, the simple or less realistic visuals reduced overall differences in achievement among the high, medium and low level reading comprehension groups, and (d) the achievement of the high level reading comprehension group improved as the degree of realism in the visuals increased; whereas, the achievement of students in the low reading comprehension group decreased as the degree of realism in the visuals increased from no visuals to the realistic model.