The Impact of the Affinity Learning Authoring Tool on Student Learning

Affinity Learning is a system that allows the user to build a lesson on a subject matter by breaking it down into concepts, misconceptions, assessments, and remediation steps. Examples and questions can also used in these components. Affinity Learning has been found to be effective and can offer cri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of educational technology systems 2007-09, Vol.36 (1), p.29-62
Main Authors: Soh, Leen-Kiat, Fowler, David, Zygielbaum, Art I.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Affinity Learning is a system that allows the user to build a lesson on a subject matter by breaking it down into concepts, misconceptions, assessments, and remediation steps. Examples and questions can also used in these components. Affinity Learning has been found to be effective and can offer critical insights to student learning strategies. Authoring Affinity Learning lesson plans or hierarchies, however, is non-trivial. We have developed two authoring tools: the first tool provides an overall view of the hierarchy with a graphical display of the nodes and links; but the second tool does not. This article reports on a study conducted to test whether the graphical authoring tool can help produce better-quality hierarchies and also help the users learn about the subject matter better than the non-graphical authoring tool. Results show that while the graphical authoring tool can result in better-quality hierarchies, it does not result in better learning.
ISSN:0047-2395
1541-3810
DOI:10.2190/ET.36.1.d