Hypermedia as a Cognitive Tool: Student Teachers’ Experiences in Learning by Doing

Participants did not require any technical support or onboarding to designing hypermedia at the beginning of the study. The majority of students graduated from computer departments in vocational or technical high schools. An interview schedule was developed to collect qualitative data on the students' opinions and perceptions of the use of hypermedia as a cognitive tool in a constructivist leaning environment. This schedule consisted of sixteen questions around the following topics:

• How the constructivist learning environment contributes to both the students' learning of instructional technology and to their material preparation of the course content
• Advantages and limitations of the sue of hypermedia as a cognitive tool in a constructivist learning context in comparison to traditional instruction
• perceptions of the procedures followed during the hypermedia development process
• Opinions about the role of the instructor in a constructivist learning context
• Suggestions concerning the effective application of hypermedia as a cognitive tool in a constructivist learning environment
• Perceptions and suggestions concerning the assessment of student performance in such a learning environment

Eight groups were interviewed in total at the end of the semester. Through content analysis of the data, eight interviews were transcribed into interview files. A predetermined set of terms from the literature were used for coding which in turn was used to classify and organize the data. Themes were then applied to make meaningful connections of the codes. And finally, the coded data was provided with a description under the themes of problems and difficulties faced by students for interpretation and discussion.

Overall Assessment of the Constructivist Learning Environment

• (N=25) for the learning purpose, student teachers preferred using hypermedia as a cognitive tool in a constructivist learning environment over traditional classroom instruction
  • Led them to be an active participant in the learning process
  • Learn and retain course content more effectively
  • Pay more attention to their project
• Some students felt the course created "a huge workload" (pg. 112)
• Five students felt the journal writing process was not effective which was attributed to group structure and functioning.

Developing Hypermedia

• (N=28) All students said that most of their learning occurred while investigating and writing the reflective journals that were used to investigate and develop the content of their hypermedia
• Two students felt that that focusing on developing hypermedia that covers one subtopic would result in better hypermedia design and learning
• Students with stronger technical skills felt burdened by the workload of developing the hypermedia on behalf of the group

Group Work

• (N=18) Most of the students said that as a result of working in a group, they improved their problem-solving and collaboration skills, their ability to think critically about the content in their hypermedia. Co-learning was also present within groups and across groups
• The majority (N=16) felt group interdependence influenced them to work harder to achieve the course objectives
• Groups with five students felt their groups were too large to complete the assigned tasks effectively
• Three groups noted that they had difficulty performing group tasks in the computer due to the constraints of the room

Learning Activities Conducted in the Classroom

• All of the students (N=28) said that the instructional activities conducted by the instructor were appropriate for helping them learn the content.
• All of the students (N=28) felt that they benefited from discussing each groups' project because of the feedback that was provided during this process
• All of the students (N=28) expressed that their were not enough learning activities conducted in class and suggested a learning activity be implemented immediately after each journal activity

Assessment of the Students' Performance

• All of the students (N=28) suggested a midterm exam
• Three students criticized the evaluation process because they felt it assessed academic performance without taking into account group performance

Based on these results, the study reveals that "students found using hypermedia as a cognitive tool to be effective for constructing an understanding of the content" (115). Yildirim notes that the amount of content covered in a learning environment of this nature must be taken into account. Another result of this study is related to group performance. The results show that most of the students benefited from the group work. Yildirim suggests that instructors provide more learning activities to make the strategy more effective. Hie concludes with a suggestion for future research, stating that "further research studies are needed to examine the full effects of hypermedia as a cognitive tool for knowledge acquisition, in comparison to traditional classroom instruction and other computer-based cognitive tools" (pg. 116).

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Reference
Yildirim, Z. (2005). Hypermedia as a Cognitive Tool: Student Teachers’ Experiences in Learning by Doing. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 8(2), 107–117.