The effect of the presentation formats of statistical e-instructional information on cognitive load and instructional efficiency

The purpose of this study is to manipulate the presentation timing of declarative and procedural information in the e-instruction of Chi-square testing and to examine the effect of four different presentation formats on cognitive load and instructional efficiency. The 160 participants were randomly assigned to receive one of the following four types of e-instruction formats: declarative information given either before or during practice task crossed with procedural information given either before or during practice task. The practice task of Chi-square testing was designed to contain six learning units transformed into e-instruction materials by using Frontpage software. Each participant learned to finish a practice task and then filled out a scale of mental efforts and a test with two Chi-square testing problems, one equivalent and one variant to the practice task. The results showed that in terms of the test performance scores and instructional efficiency, the best presentation format is declarative information given before and procedural information given during the practice task. In so doing, attention split can be avoided and working memory load is reduced, so that the cognitive load is well managed.