THE IMPACT OF INSTRUCTIONAL SUPPORT ON STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE: AN EYE TRACKING STUDY
THE IMPACT OF INSTRUCTIONAL SUPPORT ON STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE: AN EYE TRACKING STUDY

Summary/Abstract: This study examined the effects of various types of instructional support (incomplete worked-out examples - IWE; completion problems - CMP and conventional problems - CVP) on students’ attention allocation and performance as they use a computer-based learning environment. Eye movement and performance data were obtained from sixty-three university students who were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. Results indicated significant differences regarding the number and duration of fixations, not only between the three conditions, but also between these conditions across the five genetics problems students solved during training. These findings indicate that the type of instructional support differently impacted the students’ allocation of visual attention, with participants in the IWE condition having significantly lower number of fixations and shorter fixation durations. In addition, the number and duration of fixations were significantly lower in the CMP condition than in the CVP condition, but only at the beginning and the end of training (i. e., problems 1 and 5). Finally, the amount of processing time as revealed by the eye tracking data was associated with the learning outcomes (e. g., training performance), indicating that visual attention is indeed related to the strategic processing during problem solving. The combined use of eye tracking data with learning measures provides a more comprehensive picture of the cognitive processes that underlie the problem solving.

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