Measuring the effects of cognitive preference to enhance online instruction through sound ePedagogy design

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 QUEST Interactive Test Analysis System () 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 approach to size effect and statistical power, further quantified the significance of the findings.