Displaying Information & The Best Way to Learn

Displaying Information & The Best Way to Learn

by Dr. Bob Bailey

August, 1998

Displaying Information

Do people learn more when they read material, only observe graphics, hear the material, or when they read, see graphics and read the material? An earlier writer had proposed that people remember about:

10% of what they read,
20% of what they hear,
30% of what they see,
50% of what they hear and see.

Lee and Bowers (1997) studied a group of 112 university students to determine in which of the following conditions they learned best:

reading printed text alone,
listening to spoken text alone,
looking at graphics alone,
listening to spoken text plus reading printed text,
listening to spoken text plus looking at graphics,
reading printed text plus looking at graphics,
listening to spoken text, reading printed text and looking at graphics.

The participants were given a pre-test, they then learned the material, and then were given a post-test. Their learning was compared with the learning of a control group that took the same pre- and post-tests, but studied a different topic in-between.

When compared with the learning performance of the control group, the people in the different groups always demonstrated greater learning. The percent of increase for each learning approach is shown below:

hearing spoken text and looking at graphics - 91% more learning,
looking at graphics alone - 63% more,
reading printed text plus looking at graphics - 56% more,
listening to spoken text, reading text, and looking at graphics - 46% more,
hearing spoken text plus reading printed text - 32% more,
reading printed text alone - 12% more,
hearing spoken text alone - 7% more.

These insights are valuable to consider when designing multimedia interfaces.

The Best Way to Learn

When providing a new software system to users, is it better to include structured learning exercises, or to simply let users practice on their own?

Wiedenbeck and Zila (1997) conducted a study to determine whether exploration-based ("on your own") practice was as effective as having people complete specific exercises. They had participants learn a task using one of the following types of practice:

specific exercises,
general exploration,
combined exercises and exploration.

They found that computer literate participants who used the exercises:

completed the training about 34% faster, and
completed more tasks correctly.

Users who had little computer experience did not differ based on the type of practice they used. Using "on your own" exploration to facilitate learning was not too successful for experienced users. Although some participants were more motivated to practice their own tasks, their practice sessions were usually not well conceived.

Their final conclusion was that providing structured exercises seems to be the best way to have users practice with new software. They proposed that a set of exercises that are well conceived and well integrated can:

greatly assist people in learning,
illustrate typical uses of the software,
focus users on important rather than peripheral functionality,
highlight points that are difficult to understand, and prone to errors.

References

Lee, A.Y. and Bowers, A.N., The Effect of Multimedia Components on Learning, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 41st Annual Meeting, 340-344 (1997).

Wiedenbeck, S. and Zila, P.L., Hands-on Practice in Learning to Use Software: A Comparison of Exercise, Exploration, and Combined Formats, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 4(2), 169-196 (1997).