Research 101 UTCOE

Research app for dissertation study, conducted at UT at Austin, College of Edu

This study concerns instructional design for mobile learning, smartphones specifically. The greater goal of this study is to reveal design principles related to segmenting text specific to mobile device displays in ways that promote user satisfaction, reduce cognitive overload, and maximize learning gains. This study will compare large and small screen mobile displays for learning, namely laptops and smartphones. What this study will add to the body of research is an in-depth look at design approach that begins with designing a dedicated application for smartphones, and then migrates and customizes that design to the laptop screen. The results will demonstrate the importance of design in both learning from and empirically studying varied mobile screen display sizes for learning.

Additionally, in terms of mobile devices, this study will compare landscape and portrait orientation for learning from smartphones. The results will give a clearer view of current user preferences and learning results of designing for various screen orientations. Finally, this study will analyze what length of text segment is most beneficial for reading comprehension when low prior-knowledge learners access high intrinsic text via laptop and smartphone. The results will hopefully begin to uncover how to optimally design and prepare text for communicating and learning from these devices.

Learning outcomes, cognitive load, and user perception will be measured to assist in these comparisons. Learning outcomes will measure whether or not participants can recall the content following each treatment. However, learning recall offers only one point of reference for determining if a particular treatment was successfully designed and/or was advantageously delivered given the display size and orientation. Measuring for cognitive load will add perspective on participant experiences with each treatment by demonstrating whether students were cognitively overloaded, under loaded, or remained successfully in the ZPD. Positive user perception has been demonstrated by the literature as a viable piece of total mobile learning success. It is thus important that the treatments not only produce positive learning outcomes and minimize cognitive load, but also are viewed positively by the participants.