Effects of Hypermedia Versus Traditional Instruction on Students’ Achievement

Abstract

A meta-analysis was performed to synthesize existing research comparing the effects of hypermedia and traditional instruction on students’ achievement. Thirty-five studies were located from three sources, and their quantitative data were transformed into effect size (ES). The overall grand mean of the study-weighted ES for all 35 studies was 0.48. In addition, 3 of the 17 variables selected for this study (instructor bias, type of research design, and type of delivery system) had a statistically significant impact on the mean ES. The results from this study suggest that the effects of using hypermedia in instruction are positive when compared to the effects of traditional instruction. The results of this study also provide classroom teachers with accumulated research-based evidence for positive out-comes of using technology in instruction.

Keywords:

• achievement
• hypermedia
• interactive videodisc
• meta-analysis
• multimedia