An Investigation of Text‐based Instructional Materials Enhanced with Graphics

An adaptation of Bagley's (1990) experiment which compared the interaction of instructional format with adult learners was carried out replacing the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) arithmetic reasoning subtest with the Riding & Cheema (1991) Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA). There was an additional inclusion of graphics to the structured instructional format, as an independent variable. A total of 45 participants attended workshops to learn how to write PASCAL programs. All of the participants completed the CSA and their CSA‐ratio was used to select pairs of similar CSA‐ratios. One participant from each pair was given a text‐only instructional booklet, while the other was given a text‐plus‐graphics instructional booklet. The treatment groups were controlled for instructional format (text‐only/text‐plus‐graphics) and cognitive style. The independent variables were used to test for their effect on learning abstract computer programming concepts. It was found that the Verbal‐Imagery cognitive style and instructional treatment interacted in their effect on the performance‐difference scores. The Novice‐Verbal programmers performed best with a text‐plus‐graphics instructional format, performing significantly better than the Novice‐Imagers’ subgroups using the same text‐plus‐graphics material. Conversely, the Novice‐Imagers participants performed better with the material. However, the Experienced‐Imagery participants performed better with the text‐plus‐graphics instructional material than the Experienced‐Verbalisers. Overall, the Verbalisers’ worst performance occurred with the text‐only materials, while their best performance occurred with the text‐plus‐graphics material. This pilot experiment suggests that learning performance is affected by an interaction of cognitive style and instructional format. However, this interaction was contrary to expectations (Riding & Douglas, 1993), with Verbalisers performing best with text‐plus‐graphics instructional material and Novice‐Imagers performing best with text‐only instructional material.