The Relationship between Prior Knowledge and Interactive Overviews during Hypermedia-Aided Learning

Advance organizers have been used successfully to augment the learning outcome for students engaged in traditional text-based learning 1 and those engaged in hypermedia-assisted learning 2. Prior research has shown that this effect may occur because the organizer provides cues to prior knowledge which is then used as an elaborative tool for the new information 3. Novices are uniquely challenged, however, in that they have little or no prior knowledge to aid in the learning process. The present study used interactive overviews (IOs), a type of advance organizer, to explore the effect of the interaction between organizer structure and prior knowledge on novices' ability to meet particular learning goals. Subjects were recruited who displayed some knowledge of animal family resemblances but very little about interspecies relationships within ecosystems on pretests. They were then asked to learn about a world of fictitious animals with the aid of a hypermedia program which provided an IO arranged either by animal families or ecosystems. They were also assigned the goal of learning about either animal families or ecosystems. Outcome measures focused on subjects' ability to meet their learning goals. Results indicated that the ecosystem IO aided learners in meeting an ecosystems learning goal, about which they had no prior knowledge. The effect was strong enough to produce incidental learning effects, as those assigned to learn about animal families also learned about ecosystems when exposed to the ecosystem IO. In the presence of prior animal family knowledge, however, the animal families IO had no facilitative effect. It is argued, though, that this may have been an epiphenomenon of the pretesting procedure which activated subjects' existing animal family knowledge. Results are discussed with reference to Kintsch's construction integration model as well as classroom application 4.