THE ROLE OF MEANING IN INTERPRETING GRAPHICAL AND TEXTUAL FEEDBACK DURING A COMPUTER-BASED SIMULATION

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of adult lear ners to process and interpret graphical and textual feedback during a computer-based simulation when the feedback originated from contexts v arying widely in meaning. A total of 41 subjects interacted with a com puter simulation of the laws of motion using a discovery-based approac h embedded within one of two contexts (meaningful and arbitrary). In t he meaningful context the simulation was designed to be analogous to m iniature golf, whereas the arbitrary context used no such organizer. B oth simulation contexts provided alternating forms of graphical and te xtual feedback. Four dependent measures were used: Pretest/Posttest Pe rformance, Game Score, Interactivity, and Frustration. Results indicat ed no significant main effects or interactions between the meaningful and arbitrary contexts on any of the dependent measures. However, subj ects scores on the posttest were significantly higher than on the pret est indicating general effectiveness of the simulation as a discovery- based learning environment. There were also significant within-subject main effects found on the type of feedback provided. Subjects complet ed the game task in less time and were less frustrated when given anim ated graphical feedback than when given textual feedback. Subjects als o interacted less (in terms of mouse clicks) when given graphical feed back. In addition to the quantitative analysis, a qualitative analysis was also conducted with 14 additional subjects. This analysis reveale d interesting trends in how some subjects used the various feedback re presentations in the simulation to construct and test learning strateg ies versus those whose interaction generally remained shallow and reac tionary. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.