CD‐ROM versus Textbook: A Comparison of the Use of Two Learning Media by Higher Education Students

Abstract

Forty College of Higher Education undergraduates received a series of questions of various types (factual, interpretive, comparative and deductive) on development in the Third World, and were given either a conventional textbook on the subject, or an electronic version of the same text on CD‐ROM with search facilities which was presented on a personal computer. There was a significant interaction between mode of presentation and question type, with the electronic mode group being superior on all question types except the comparative where the lack of difference here appeared to be because of the absence of illustrations in the electronic mode (which had to be omitted for technical reasons). The results suggest that the electronic medium is worthy of a further development.