The Effects Of Instructional Help On The Learning Performance Of Different Learners With Different Cognitive Styles In Multimedia Learning Environment

Multimedia technique is developing. In teaching practices, educators now focus more on the fitness between the representational styles and the personal learning styles of learners. So it is important to know how to optimize the combination of instructional help and the mode of representation for different learners with different cognitive styles. In order to achieve that purpose, the author did two experiments. The first experiment was a pilot test in which the author investigated whether learners with different cognitive styles would show different learning performance when they were under the same non-instructional help learning condition. In second experiment, the author analyzed the effects of different combinations of instructional help and mode of representation on the learning performance of different learners with different cognitive styles by doing a 3×3×2 between-subjects design study. Following results were found:First, in the pilot test, under non-instructional help learning condition, the learning performances of field independent learners were different from field dependent learners.Second, in experiment II, the author found that the directive help was more effective for recognition, and non-directive help was more effective for transfer.Third, in experiment II, the effects of directive help and non-directive help on field independent and field dependent learners were different from each other. In the recognition test, the effects of different modes of representation on different learners were the same. The directive help gave the learners the greatest help. The second effective instructional help was non-directive help. The non-instructional help was the worst among them. Directive help was more helpful for field-dependent learners. The combination of directive help and auditory representation gave the most help to learners. In the transfer test, non-directive help was most helpful, and the second was directive help, the worst was non-instructive. Non-directive help gave more help to field independent learners. The combination of non-directive help and auditory representation was more helpful for learners. The auditory representation was the most helpful to field independent learners.