Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Computer-assisted instruction; Interactive multimedia; College students -- Middle West -- Attitudes

Abstract

Multimedia has become the new learning environment. As technology advances and becomes more prominent, traditional education needs to adapt and utilize all the benefits that can be achieved with computer-assisted instruction. Awareness of students' attitudes toward multimedia-based education is critical in the evaluation of multimedia courses and development of multimedia-based curriculum. The purpose of this study was to examine students' perceptions of multimedia-based instruction. Educational institutions are faced with the challenges of delivering valuable training options to meet the varying needs of students and staff; computer technology has become and will continually be integrated into the classroom to make learning easier, more successful and efficient. For this reason, the promotion and monitoring of positive attitudes towards multimedia-based instruction is critical.

Four courses were selected by the researcher for analysis because of their use of a multimedia learning environment. A29-item questionnaire was administered to 123 students to measure their attitudes towards online learning with multimedia tutorials. Students were segregated into groups based on their prior experience and analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation and frequency) and an independent t test. The data collected from the survey answered questions pertaining to the benefit of additional online tutorials, learner independence, classroom autonomy, effect on their learning, and anxiety.

Based on the results of this study, the statistical analysis indicated there were significant differences at the <.05 level between the two groups of students for each of the five hypotheses. Additionally, students' attitudes on average were nearly half a point higher (M = 0.46) for those who had prior experience with multimedia in the classroom than students with no experience based on a Likert five-point scale. However, students' attitudes were lower for students with prior experience (M = 2. 76, SD = 0. 77) over students without experience (M = 2.81, SD = 1.00) for the research question about whether students prefer online multimedia learning tutorials over traditional class handouts.

Year of Submission

2007

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Industrial Technology

First Advisor

Shahram VarzaVand

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2007

Object Description

1 PDF file (129 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Download

Comments?

Share

COinS