Adolescents’ Use of Multiple Representations of Information in Self-regulated and Externally-regulated Learning with Hypermedia

This study explored learners’ utilization of multiple representations of information within a hypermedia learning environment during self-regulated and externally-regulated learning episodes. 135 middle school and high school participants were randomly assigned to either a self-regulated learning (SRL) condition, in which the learners attempted to use a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system alone, or an externally-regulated learning (ERL) condition, in which learners attempted the same learning task, with access to a human tutor who facilitated their learning by administering prompts to engage in several adaptive selfregulated learning processes. Results indicate that learners in the ERL condition spent significantly more time constructing their own external representations of information (i.e. taking notes or drawing), and significantly less time reading text only, reading content with text and diagram, and watching the animation included in the hypermedia environment. In addition, correlations between the learning measures and time spent on these different types of representations indicate the learners who spent more time constructing external representations gained more from pretest to posttest, and those who spent more time in the remaining three types of representations gained less.