I noticed that online team dialog, team concept maps, and posttest free recall mirror the linearity of the textbook chapter, and especially those concepts that are highlighted with text signals.
Text signals in linear text that have (correctly) been carried over into online learning materials are useful as reference points for discussions
when there is no page numbering as in HTML files.
Other signals such as a frame, a table, a figure might also be used for referencing the topic under discussion. If there are multiple frames, tables or figures, the students cannot use them as reference points.
Students usually approach traditional texts linearly, and this
behaviour is carried over into their online learning. This strategy
helps them not to get lost in hyperspace.
Ian, in terms of text, I was thinking more about the influence of 'paper' textbooks read offline, but your point about online texts makes me think that text signals may have an even greater attention all ( and thus cognitive) influence with online texts. Specifically will an online synchronous or asynchronous dialog tend to focus nearly exclusively on signaled information in the text?
I don't know. That's probably an open question for research. So I am going back to mark your question as being a good question! Certainly, students should know that text signals are there for a reason. Simplistically, they may even think that quizzes will have as answers words that are underlined.
Ideally, they can make their own (public?) annotations and highlighting.
It is interesting too that the linearity of the text gets reflected in recall. Perhaps this is because students can easily use the geographic or topographic path as an aid to memorizing? (The cloth onto which to connect the Velcro?)
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