OviattAbstract < Main

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---++Guest lecture

---++Sharon Oviatt

---+++OGI

---++Quiet Interfaces that Help People Think

As technical as we have become, modern computing still has not permeated
many important areas of our lives, including mathematics education which
involves pencil and paper. In the present study, twenty high school geometry
students varying in ability from low to high participated in a comparative
assessment of math problem solving using existing pencil and paper work
practice (PP), compared with three different interfaces: a digital stylus
and paper interface (DP), pen tablet interface (PT), and graphical tablet
interface (GT). Cognitive Load Theory correctly predicted that as interfaces
departed more from familiar work practice (GT > PT > DP), students would
experience greater extraneous cognitive load such that performance would
deteriorate in speed, attentional focus, meta-cognitive control, correctness
of solutions, expressive fluency, and memory. In addition, low-performing
students would experience higher cognitive load overall, such that the same
interfaces would disrupt their performance disproportionately more than for
high-performing students. The present results indicate that Cognitive Load
Theory provides a coherent and powerful basis for predicting users'
performance. In the future, new interfaces for areas like education and
mobile computing could benefit from design that minimizes users' cognitive
load so performance is adequately supported.


-- Main.EmilyBender - 14 Apr 2006
Topic revision: r1 - 2006-04-14 - EmilyBender