Sunday, April 4, 2010

Arrranging content in a Web site

Scrolling vs Print Type Interfaces
http://casanchez.faculty.asu.edu/pubs/scroll.pdf
To Scroll or Not to scroll:
According to a recent paper many students retain more if the material is presented in print-like format, on separate pages.
Arizona State University Christopher A. Sanchez, Arizona State University, Mesa, and Jennifer Wiley, University of Illinois at Chicago

Students were presented with material that they had to scroll to read or as material in separate pages, navigating by the next-back functions of the browser. The students who used the material in separate pages did better in reading comprehension.
I wonder what this implies for sites like Blackboard, where you can break content into Folders or arrange in a Learning Unit. It probably says that having all content in one Item is not a good way to arrange information. However, I find that students who print out all material prefer that form of presentation.

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