Perception of the raison d'être in anchored instruction: An ecological psychology perspective

In this study we provide evidence that video anchors encourage students to adopt certain contrived goals over their more naturalistic goals. Well designed goals are those that increase the probability that students will detect the raison d'être of content information as they work toward the contrived goal. In those cases where problem solvers detect the raison d'être of the material, transfer should be enhanced. In experiment 1, participants worked with hypermedia in which either an anchor problem was posed, or they were preparing for a test. They were grouped based on their report of adopting one of four goals. Results showed 72 percent of students assigned the anchor reported their goals as "to solve a meaningful problem," and students with such goals showed constrained navigation toward relevant information and significantly higher learning efficiency scores than students with any of the other goals. In experiment 2, results demonstrated that when an anchor encourages students to adopt goals that increase the probability that they will detect the raison d'être of the material, transfer is enhanced. Individuals assigned the anchor reconstructed significantly more information and detected qualitatively different information in a brief transfer video. Goals that enable the problem solver to detect the raison d'être of information enhance learning, focus navigation within nonlinear text, and afford transfer.