Learning effects of CAI on college students

The purpose of this study was to determine if college students learn better when using lecture/CAI than by using the conventional lecture method, when the material presented is very visually oriented. The subjects consisted of 28 students enrolled in a freshman level computer science course that is required for their major. Students were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Both groups received the same lecture. The control group was presented examples in class by the professor aided by transparencies. The treatment group was presented the same examples using a computer tutorial, without teacher intervention. As was indicated on the pre-test, the two groups demonstrated remarkably similar results in the amount of prior knowledge of the subject area. There was no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of learning that took place, as shown by the results of the post-test. There was, however, a considerable difference in time spent on the task. The examples took much longer for theprofessor to present to the control group than it took the treatment group to absorb the interactive examples on individual computers. The majority of the students who were in the treatment group (lecture and computer examples) indicated that they preferred the computer tutorial to having examples presented by the instructor.