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Cognitive Style, Gender, Attitudetoward Computer‐assisted Learningand Academic AchievementReda Abouserie a , Dennis Moss a & Stephen Barasi ba School of Education, University of Wales, College of Cardiff,42 Park Place, Cardiff CF1 3BB, United Kingdomb Department of Physiology, University of Wales, College ofCardiff, P.O. Box 902, Cardiff CF1 1SS, United KingdomPublished online: 02 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Reda Abouserie , Dennis Moss & Stephen Barasi (1992) Cognitive Style,Gender, Attitude toward Computer‐assisted Learning and Academic Achievement, EducationalStudies, 18:2, 151-160

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Educational Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1992 151

Cognitive Style, Gender, Attitudetoward Computer-assisted Learningand Academic AchievementREDA ABOUSERIE & DENNIS MOSSSchool of Education, University of Wales, College of Cardiff, 42 Park Place,Cardiff CF1 3BB, United Kingdom

STEPHEN BARASIDepartment of Physiology, University of Wales, College of Cardiff, P.O. Box 902,Cardiff CF1 1SS, United Kingdom

SUMMARY This paper reports an investigation of cognitive style, gender, attitude toward usingcomputer-assisted learning (CAL) and academic achievement among university students. AGroup Embedded Figures Test was used to assess students' cognitive style and a questionnairewas used for the evaluation of students' attitude toward CAL. The results revealed thatstudents have positive attitudes toward CAL but they were not prepared to rely entirely onCAL. A 2 x 2 ANOVA was used to investigate the effect of cognitive style and gender on theattitude toward CAL. The results revealed that male students preferred using CAL significantlymore than females and field dependent students were more prepared to rely entirely on CALthan field independent students. On the other hand, there was a significant difference betweenmales and females in their achievement scores in favour of the male group. But there was nodifference between field dependence and field independence groups in their achievement. Theresults also revealed no significant relationship between students' attitudes toward CAL andtheir achievement in these courses.

Introduction

A great deal of attention has been given in recent years to the use of computer-assisted learning (CAL) in higher education. Courses or parts of courses providedby CAL generally require students to work at their own pace through a structuredset of learning experiences. Learners are responsible for scheduling their learningtime and completing the coursework exercises (Grabinger & Jonassen, 1988). It hasbeen assumed that such courses will lead to learners completing their instructionmore efficiently and with greater satisfaction because they are in control of theirown progress. CAL materials are able to present text and graphic materials tolearners in a co-ordinated manner and the use of exercises and questioningtechniques means that the learners are active during the learning process. A numberof previous studies showed the effectiveness of these materials on students' achieve-

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152 R. Abouserie et al.

ment and the students demonstrate positive attitudes toward using these materialswithin their learning courses. However, Grabinger & Jonassen's (1988) researchfindings were less certain and they concluded that "Although a few students seemedto thrive on the programme and most passed the course with 'AV and 'B's', closingcourse evaluations indicate that most were frustrated and suffered a great deal ofanxiety through the experience. It has been suggested that such problems may bedue to learner characteristics".

With these observations in mind it was decided to evaluate the attitudes of agroup of Physiology students toward their use of CAL in their coursework and toexplore any relationships between their attitude to CAL and their cognitive learningstyle on one hand and with their achievement scores on the other hand.

Canelos et al (1988) has suggested that one major factor influencing effectivelearning may be that of field dependence/independence (FD/FI). They suggest thatlearners who demonstrate field independence may be better able to abstractinformation more readily from learning materials and requires fewer visual andverbal cues in order to learn effectively. Conversely the field dependent learner mayneed a more structured presentation with more visual and verbal cues and morereinforcement. Canelos et al. (1988) go on to suggest that a knowledge of FD or FItendency can assist an instructional designer in the design of learning materials.

FD/FI Cognitive Style, CAL and Academic Achievement

Thompson (1988) summarised the major characteristics of field independent andfield dependent learners as follows.

Field Independent Learners (FI)

(1) Impose organisation on unstructured fields of knowledge.(2) Sample fully from the non-salient features of a concept in order to attain

the relevant attributes and to form hypotheses.(3) Prefer active learning situations including hypothesis formulation.(4) Demonstrate a learning curve which is discontinuous with no significant

improvement in learning of a new concept until the appropriate hypothesis isformulated after which there is a sudden improvement.

(5) Use mnemonic structures and reorganisation of materials for more effec-tive storage and retrieval of information.

(6) Learn to generalise more readily.(7) Prefer to learn general principles and seem to acquire them easily.

Field Dependent Learners (FD)

(1) Take organisations of a field of knowledge as given.(2) Use only the most salient features of a concept in the attainment of the

relevant attributes and in hypothesis formation.(3) Utilise the passive approach to learning.

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Computer-assisted Learning 153

(4) Their learning curve shows a continuous gradual improvement as relevantcues are sampled.

(5) Use existing organisation of materials in cognitive processing.(6) Are less effective in making generalisations.(7) Prefer to learn specific information and seem to acquire them more easily.

The factors outlined above seem to indicate that variations in cognitive style amonglearners are fundamental and should not be ignored. Indeed it suggests that theyshould be actively considered when designing CAL systems and when requiringstudents to undertake part or all of their course via CAL. It is possible that fielddependent learners might prefer CAL systems since such systems tend to presentinformation to learners in well organised steps with lots of exemplary material andassociated exercises. On the other hand, field independent learners might preferCAL since they can use such a facility as one of many learning resources which aidthem in the formulation of their personal knowledge structures.

Study Aims

The aims of the present study were as follows:

(1) to investigate students' attitudes toward using CAL;(2) to investigate the relationship between students' attitude toward using

CAL and their FD/FI cognitive style;(3) to investigate gender differences in students' attitudes toward using CAL;(4) to investigate the relationship between FDI cognitive style, gender, atti-

tude toward using CAL and students academic achievement in Physiology coursesin their first year at the university.

Method

Subjects

The subjects were 143 first year medical students enrolled on a Physiology course aspart of the 2nd MB course at the University of Wales College of Cardiff. Thispreclinical course lasts for 2 years. The course is delivered in a variety of formatsincluding lectures, tutorials, practical work, clinical demonstrations, tape slideprogrammes and CAL. The CAL consists of nine computer tutorial packages whichcover all of the basic course content. Students have unlimited (office hours plusweekends) access to the teaching packages in a self-study laboratory containing thenecessary microcomputers. All the software programs have developed within thedepartment of Physiology. Each program is limited to one aspect of the course andis designed to complement or supplement the existing lecture course and newmaterial is not introduced. Each program has in-text questions with accompanyingremedial loops. Whilst the broad aim of each package is to consolidate lecturematerial, the in-text questions are designed to promote problem-solving skills. Themore contemporary packages provide the student with information concerning

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154 R. Abouserie et al.

her/his performance. The sample was made up of 66 male students and 77 femaleswith an average age of 19.9 years.

Instruments

Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) (Witkin et al., 1971). GEFT was used as ameasure of FD/FI cognitive style. Since its development, numerous studies haveused this test as a measure of FD/FI. It consists of a booklet that contains threesections, the first section is just for practice, the second and the third sectionscontain 18 pictures of "complex figures" within which "simple figures" are em-bedded or hidden. The task of the subject is to find a given simple figure in each ofthe complex figures on the test. The subject's ability to find the simple figurewithout being distracted by the complex figure indicates the extent to which she/heis FI. There is a limited time of 5 minutes for the second and the third section. Thesubject is given one point for each correct answer so as a subject who gets a highscore is one who is judged to be FI. The test has been applied according to thestandard instruction as explained in Witkin et al. (1971).

FD/FI students were identified on the basis of extreme scores on the GEFT.Students whose scores on the GEFT fell at or below the point representing the firstquartile were identified as FD. Similarly, those students whose scores fell at orabove the third quartile were identified as FI. According to this there were 35 FDand 44 FI students. The split half reliability method was employed which yielded0.80 for the whole sample with 0.70 for the male and 0.86 for the female samples.

Evaluation of students' attitudes toward CAL questionnaire. A short list of sixquestions was prepared for the evaluation of students' attitudes toward using CAL.The first question asked how many of the tutorial packages had been used. Thesecond question which was an open-ended question asked about the reasons for notusing all the tutorial packages. The other four questions were statements withanswers of the Likert-type on a five-point scale from strongly agree to stronglydisagree. Three of these four items were from Skinner's (1988) short evaluationform with slight modifications.

Academic achievement. Academic achievement was determined by students' scoresat the end of the academic year in the Physiology courses.

Results

There were several analyses for the data of the study, the first one dealing with theevaluation of students attitudes towards using CAL and the second analysis was forthe investigation of gender and FDI differences and their relationship with thestudents attitudes toward using CAL. The third analysis was for the investigation ofgender and FDI differences and their relationship with students' achievement scores

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Computer-assisted Learning 155

and the fourth analysis was for the investigation of the relationship betweenattitudes toward using CAL and the achievement scores.

/. Students' Attitudes toward Using CAL

Table I shows the students' responses to each question in the attitude questionnaire.

None

No. Percentage

TABLE I. Students' responses to the first item of the questionnaire

Less than 25%

No. Percentage

14 9.8

25% to 50%

No. Percentage

48 33.6

50% to 75%

No. Percentage

40 28

More than 75%

No. Percentage

34 23.8

No.

7

All

Percentage

4.9

Item 1. The first item was "how many of the computer tutorials have you used?".Table I shows the students' responses to this question. From this table it can be seenthat the majority of students (86%) had used more than 25% of the computertutorials packages and up to 56% of the students had used more than 50% of thecomputer tutorials packages. Therefore, it is obvious that the majority of thestudents were trying to use the available CAL facility which is interpreted asrepresenting a positive attitude toward using CAL.

Item 3. Table II shows the students responses to the third statement of thequestionnaire which was "a computer tutorial is an appropriate instructionaltechnique for this course". It can be seen from Table II that the majority of studentsresponded with "agree' (A) or "strongly agree" (SA) with the statement. Therewere up to 88% in the two response categories "agree" and "strongly agree". On theother hand 3.5% and 8.4% were the responses in the "disagree" (D) and "unde-cided" (U) categories respectively.

TABLE II. Percentages of students' responses to the items 3, 4, 5 and 6 of thequestionnaire

Strongly disagree Disagree Undecided Agree Strongly agree

Item 3Item 4Item 5Item 6

1.470.65.6

3.532.920.316.8

8.430.1

723.8

65.725.92.1

37.8

22.49.8

16.1

Item 4. The fourth statement in the questionnaire was "I Prefer computer tutorialsto other instructional technique". Table II shows the students responses to thestatement. It is clear from Table II that students responses were split between

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156 R. Abouserie et al.

agreement and disagreement with the statement. This could be seen if we collapsethe two agreement responses together (SA and A) and the two disagreementresponses "strongly disagree' and "disagree" (SD and D), this yields 35.7%agreement and 34.3% disagreement. Students' responses to this statement weredivided almost equally between agreement and disagreement with the statement.

Item 5. The fifth statement was the crucial one. "would you be prepared to relyentirely on computer tutorials only, (i.e. no lecture course)?". Table II shows thestudents responses to the statement and it can be seen from the table that a largemajority of the students disagreed with the statement. There were up to 90.6% ofthe responses in the two categories of disagreement (SD and D). The majority ofthe students were not prepared to rely on CAL only.

Item 6. Table II shows the students responses to the sixth item of the questionnaire.The statement was "more courses should be taught using computer tutorials". It canbe seen from the table that collapsing the agreement categories and the disagreementcategories yielded 48.9% agreement and 22.4% disagreement with the statement.Therefore, the responses indicated a high level of agreement that more coursesshould be taught using computer tutorials.

Item 2 was an open-ended statement which asked about the reasons for notusing all the computer tutorials and the most frequent reason mentioned was that ofshortage of time. In some cases students indicated that they would like thelaboratory open for longer hours while some students said that they did not haveenough time to use computer tutorials.

2. FD/FI, Gender and Students' Attitudes toward Using CAL

The answers for the first item in the questionnaire scored from 1 (non) to 6 (all)and the answers for the other four items scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree). Therefore, the highest score on the questionnaire indicate apositive attitude and the lowest score the reverse. A 2 x 2 ANOVA [2 gender(male-female) X 2 FDI cognitive style (FD-FI)] was used for the analysis of eachitem and for the total score of the questionnaire.

The ANOVA analysis showed that the variables sex, FDI and the interactionbetween sex and FDI had no significant effect in items 1, 3,6 and the total score ofthe questionnaire. In other words, the difference between male and female and thedifference between FD group and FI group were not significant in their responses tothese items of the questionnaire and the total score. Also, the interaction betweensex and FD/FI was not significant in these items.

Table III shows the ANOVA summary table for the result of item 4 of thequestionnaire. From Table III, it can be seen that there was a significant effect forthe gender variable in the fourth item. The means were 3.47 for male students and2.98 for female students. Thus, male students preferred using CAL significantlymore than female students. Table III however, showed no significant effect for

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Computer-assisted Learning 157

FD/FI variable and no significant effect for the interaction between sex and FD/FIin the responses to item 4 of the questionnaire.

TABLE III. ANOVA summary table for the result of item 4

Source of variation

GenderFDIGender X FDIError

SS

4.6180.0081.676

85.764

d.f.

111

75

MS

4.6180.0081.6761.144

F

4.0380.0071.466

SignificanceofF

0.05NSNS

Table IV shows the ANOVA summary table for the result of item 5 of thequestionnaire. It can be seen from Table IV that the gender variable had nosignificant effect which means no significant difference between males and femalesin the responses to item 5. However there was a significant effect for the FD/FIvariable, that is; there was a significant difference between the FD students and FIstudents in their responses to item 5. The means for the two groups were 1.60 and1.25 for FD and FI respectively. However, both groups' means are low (in apossible score range of 1 to 5) and it can be said that FD group is less unfavourablyinclined. The interaction between sex and FD/FI was not significant in this item.

TABLE IV. ANOVA summary table for the result of item 5

Source of variation

GenderFDIGender X FDIError

SS

0.6572.1220.293

37.699

d.f.

111

75

MS

0.6572.1220.2930.503

F

1.3084.1220.584

Significanceo f F

NS0.05NS

3. FDI, Sex and Academic Achievement Scores

Table V shows the results of 2(FD/FI) X 2(male/female) analysis of variance onstudents academic achievement scores in these Physiology courses.

TABLE V. ANOVA summary table for the results of achievement scores

Source of variation SS d.f. MSSignificance

ofF

GenderFDIGender X FDIError

1005.17931.7630.019

5348.240

111

55

1005.17931.7630.019

97.240

10.3370.3270.000

0.01NSNS

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158 R. Abouserie et al.

It can be seen from table V that gender is the only significant variable. In otherwords, there was a significant difference between males and females in the achieve-ment scores in the Physiology courses. The means for the two groups were 57.96and 49.71 for males and females respectively. This shows that males are achievingbetter than females in these courses. On the other hand neither the effect of FDInor the interaction between FDI and gender was significant on the achievementscores.

4. Attitudes toward Using CAL and Academic Achievement

The aim of this analysis is to investigate the effect of using CAL and the attitudestoward using these packages on the achievement on these courses. The first item inthe questionnaire was about the number of computer tutorials packages the studentshave used and as Table I showed that there were 5 categories explained the studentsresponses. One way ANOVA used to compare between the achievement scores forthe students in the five categories. Table VI shows the ANOVA results.

TABLE VI. ANOVA summary table for the results of the comparison between thecategories of using CAL on the achievement

Source

Between groupsWithin groups

SS

352.959848.35

d.f.

4106

MS

88.2492.91

F

0.94

Significanceof-F

NS

It is clear from Table VI that the number of packages used by the students hasno significant effect on their achievement in these courses. In other words, there isno relationship between CAL packages and the achievement in Physiology courses.

On the other hand Table VII shows the correlation coefficients between eachitem of the questionnaire (from item 3 to item 6 and total for them) and studentsachievement scores.

TABLE VII. Correlations between questionnaire items andachievement scores

Item 3Item 4Item 5Item 6

Total

Achievement

0.1780.146

—0.1110.098

0.121

Level of significance

0.05NSNSNS

NS

It can be seen from Table VII that there is only one significant correlation

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Computer-assisted Learning 159

coefficient, between item 3 and achievement scores. However, it should be notedthat this correlation is very low. We can therefore conclude that overall there is norelationship between students' attitudes toward using CAL and their achievementscores in these courses.

Discussion

The results of the study with regard to the students' attitudes toward using CALindicated positive attitudes in general. In other words, the majority of studentsagreed and were in favour of using CAL. In fact the majority of students hadalready used CAL. For example more than 50% of the Physiology course CALpackages had been used by 56% of the students as indicated by the responses to thefirst item in the questionnaire. On the other hand, the most interesting result is thatof the fifth item which indicated that the majority of the students disagreed withentire dependence on the CAL only. This is interpreted to mean that the studentswere in favour of CAL as a supplement but not as a substitute for other instructionmethods. This may be due to their greater familiarity with the conventional lectureinstruction than with CAL. Thus, it is clear that students are far from beingconvinced of the possibility of depending on CAL alone. The conclusion about thestudents attitudes toward using CAL is that although they have positive attitudestoward CAL, they are not prepared to rely only on CAL.

With regard to gender differences, generally, there were no significant differ-ences between males and females except in their responses to the preference forusing CAL. Male students preferred using CAL significantly more than females.Nevertheless, we can conclude that there were no overall differences between malesand females in their attitudes toward using CAL.

Concerning the FD/FI cognitive style, in general, there were no significantdifferences between FD and FI in their responses to the four items and in the totalscore of the questionnaire. However, in the fifth item there was a significantdifference between FD and FI in favour of the FD group. This result could beexplained in terms of the cognitive style theory as the FD persons prefer to learnspecific information and use the existing organisation of material as given (Thomp-son, 1988). The CAL packages may therefore provide them with such organisationwhich they feel they can rely upon. However, it is not possible to generalise fromthis result because there were no significant differences between FD and FI either inthe total score of the questionnaire or in the other items.

Thus, we can conclude that there were no overall significant differencesbetween FD and FI students in their attitudes toward using CAL.

The results of the effect of FDI cognitive style, gender and attitude towardCAL on the students achievement scores showed no significant differences betweenFD and FI groups in the achievement scores. In other words, cognitive style has noeffect on students achievement in Physiology courses. On the other hand, there weregender differences in the achievement in favour of males. Males would appear to beachieving better than females in the Physiology courses. However, the resultsrevealed that using CAL tutorial packages have no effect on the students' achieve-

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160 R. Abouserie et al.

ment. This indicates that using these packages adds nothing to students academicachievement. The relationship between attitudes toward CAL and the achievementscores was not significant which confirms the results between using CAL andachievement. These results must therefore raise questions about the aims andbenefits of students use of CAL packages in the Physiology courses. However, thisis an overall result and it may suggest that further evaluation is needed for eachtutorial package and its effectiveness on students attainment in that particularcourse which is covered by that package.

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