Learning performance, usage of navigation tools and opinions of university students with different cognitive styles on hypermedia of different page length

This study investigated the learning achievement and the navigation tools? usage of university students with different cognitive styles. The subjects of the study were 127 undergraduate students from the Faculty of Education, Yıldız Technical University. To be able to categorize the cognitive styles, the holist and the analytic subscales of Sternberg?s Thinking Styles Inventory were utilized. The 33% of the students were analytic, 43% of them were holist and 24% of them were both, i.e, holist-analytic. Two hypermedia learning materials one with long pages and the other with short pages were designed by the researcher. The content presented on these hypermedia which is on the ?Brain-Based Learning?, the multiple choice test to measure the achievement and a questionnaire to collect the students? opinions on the hypermedia they navigated and studided the content were also developed by the researcher. Both parametric and nonparametric statistical techniques ? two-way analysis of variance, the Kruskal-Wallis and the Mann-Whitney-U tests were utilized. Major finding of the study is that the page length did neither affect the learning achievement nor the learners? opinions on the hypermedia used. All students with different cognitive styles did well on both short and long page conditions and they were all happy with the page length they work on. In addition, the frequencies of using the navigation tools were not statistically different; except on the short page condition the holist-analytic students used forward-backward buttons more than the others did. The findings of this study showed that designing computer-assisted and Web-based instructional materials designed with short pages as eveybody got used to is not a necessity for the university students. Long page designs can be realized and scroll bar can be used to move up and down on such pages. Organizing the content to be presented on long pages is more easy than organizing it on short pages. Using this approach, more instructional materials might be uploaded to Web more easily and efficiently. Keywords: Cognitive style, hypermedia, instructional material, Web-based instruction, lostness, disorientation, learning, navigation, navigation tools, page length, long page, short page, scrol bar, scrolling.