ePedagogy design for online instruction by measuring the interactive effects of cognitive preference on performance outcomes

Researchers are keen to know whether online instruction is effective and whether people learn anything while undertaking an online course. To this end, a research programme was devised to evaluate an ePedagogy, which involves the interactive effects of online instructional strategies enhanced with text plus-textual metaphors or text-plus-graphical metaphors, and cognitive preference for learning basic programming concepts. The Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) program (Riding & Cheema, 1991) was used to identify participants' cognitive preferences. The QUEST Interactive Test Analysis System (Adams & Khoo, 1996) was used to measure cognitive performance, ensuring an absence of error measurement in the programming knowledge testing instruments. Reliability of these instruments was therefore assured through the calibration afforded by the QUEST estimate that provided predictability of the research design. A means analysis of the QUEST data, using the Cohen (1977) approach to size effect and statistical power, further quantified the significance of the findings. The quasi-experimental method adopted for this research links instructional science, cognitive psychology, and objective measurement to provide reliable techniques to enhance cognitive performance evaluation in the education, training and educational technology paradigms. The research outcomes will be of interest to educators, cognitive psychologists, and computer science practitioners specializing in human-computer interactions (HCI).