The authors describe studies conducted to explore the effectiveness of structuring and presenting instructional information in ways that will accommodate learners with different cognitive styles. The studies were conducted with a group of third-year information systems students who attended seven hours of a course on artificial intelligence. The students were randomly divided into two groups. One group studied in a text environment, and the other studied in a Web environment. Performance was evaluated through a one-hour exam given at the end of the course.

Cognitive styles are constructs used to classify an individual’s means of organizing and processing information. The cognitive styles studied in these experiments were field dependence/field independence, verbalizer/imager, and wholist/analytic. Student subjects were administered the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) to classify them as field dependent or independent. They were also administered Riding’s Cognitive Style Analysis in order to classify them as verbalizers or imagers, and wholist or analytic.

The empirical results of the studies point to the basic conclusion that instructional environments can be designed to accommodate different cognitive styles. Other results indicated that verbalizers outperformed imagers in both text and Web environments, and that subjects with all cognitive styles did better in the text environment than the Web environment.

This paper should be of interest to others doing research in the design of instructional media. The writing is clear, and there is a good reference list.