Date of Graduation

2000

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The movement toward assistive technology (AT) and access to the general curriculum provided by the 1997 Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has resulted in the need to study instructional methods that employ computer-based multimedia. Although the definition of AT includes interactive multimedia (Blackhurst, 1997), there has been little research on the use of multimedia to provide access to the general education curriculum. The existing literature has provided a theoretical base and investigated the ability of multimedia presentations to improve academic skills, but has failed to identify instructional practices that promote such access through AT. This dissertation used research methods related to instructional practices that promote access to a general education topic and data collection on the relationship between cognitive abilities and learning from multimedia. The research used one 6 x 3 analysis of variance (ANOVA) with six counterbalanced instructional groups and three trials to study the effects of instructional method and measurement. The study used six separate correlations to study the relationships between cognitive abilities (memory and spatial relations) and learning from multimedia presentations. The results indicated that the trials variable produced a significant practice effect, but instructional order and the interaction were not significant. The correlations indicated that memory for sentences predicted knowledge acquisition for the media presentations, but spatial relations skill was not a significant predictor. The finding for memory as a predictor is consistent with Mayer's line of multimedia research (1997). The finding that instructional order was not significant is consistent with Clark's (1983) “delivery” view of multimedia instruction.

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