Interactivity of Question Prompts and Feedback on Secondary Students' Science Knowledge Acquisition and Cognitive Load

This study investigated how question prompts and feedback influenced knowledge acquisition and cognitive load when learning Newtonian mechanics within a web-based multimedia module. Participants were one hundred eighteen 9th grade students who were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, forming a 2 x 2 factorial design with the presence or absence of question prompts as one factor and types of instructional feedback as the other. With regard to knowledge acquisition, the findings revealed a significant main effect of question prompts and a significant interaction between question prompts and feedback. With regard to cognitive load, the results found a significant interaction between question prompts and feedback. Students who received problem-solving question prompts and corrective feedback achieved better performance and perceived less cognitive load. Implications for designing web-based science learning are discussed.