Method

Participants
Participants were approximately 190 first-year psychology undergraduates at the UWB. Complete data was obtained from 140 of these. Taking part in the experiment was a compulsory part of the first year learning skills module, which all first years are required to take. The participants were required to write up the experiment as an assessed part of their course.

Apparatus - WWW
The experiment was performed in the  UWB Psychology Department Maclab , which contains Apple Macintosh computers, some of which are Performa 6200 models, others are Power Macintosh 4400/160 models. These all had access to the experimental web pages, using Netscape Communicator Gold. There are 47 computers in the room used, one of which was not working at the time. The web pages were written in HTML or converted to it using HotDogPro. They contained information on study and learning skills in two formats; concept map and linear text. Both formats used identical pages, only the way they were connected to one another was different. The concept map used is shown in Fig. 3. The questions for the pre- and post-tests were randomly assigned by topic area, by pulling numbers out of a bag. An example of a pre- or post-test question might be, “What is the best method of learning information? a) Discussing ideas. b) Relying on your memory. c) Making notes. d) Photocopying everything. e) The method you choose.”  The whole of the site can be found  here.

A Macintosh G300 running a demonstration version of WebSTAR 3 was used as a web server. Each time a page was accessed, the time, IP number and page address were logged to a text file on the hard disc. A demo version of Lasso 3 was used to enter the responses to the pre- and post-test questionnaires into a FileMaker Pro database. This file also logged the IP address, so that the log file could be related to it, and the number which the participant entered as his or her UCAS number, so that these results could be matched to the questionnaire results, and the time. When the experiment was over, the data from the questionnaire database was merged with databases containing the results of the learning styles inventory and the score for the pre- and post-test using SPSS.

Learning Styles Inventory.
The questionnaire was an adapted version of Sternberg and Wagner's Learning Styles Inventory. The range of scores required for an individual to be classified as a versatile thinker was reduced, as there have been found to be a large quantity of versatile thinkers in the Bangor psychology undergraduate population. The whole inventory can be found in Appendix B(under construction). An example of an item designed to find local thinkers might be, “I prefer to memorise facts and bits of information without any particular context,” whereas global thinkers should agree more with, “In doing a task , I like to see how what I do fits into the general picture.”

Design
There were three levels of thinking style, which were: global thinkers, local thinkers and versatile thinkers. The strategy pursued in approaching the information had two levels; concept map and linear text. It was a correlational design, comparing the groups created by levels of thinking style.

Procedure
The participants were divided alphabetically into four groups, which was assumed to be reasonably random. Two groups were run on each of two afternoons, a Tuesday and a Friday of the same week. On each afternoon, one group would complete Learning Styles Inventories, while the other did the learning exercise. The groups would then change over, with the group who had done the Inventory moving to the computer task, and vice versa. Before commencing the experiment, participants were asked to complete a consent form (a copy of this can be found in Appendix C - under construction). The questionnaire was administered as a pencil and paper test, a copy of which can be found in Appendix B (under construction). Participants were simply asked to fill it in.

In order to score the inventory, the score for the questions which tap global thinking were reversed, so that five became one, and so on. The scores for each participant were then added together. Scores between 44 and 52 classified a person as a versatile thinker. Scores of 43 and below were local thinkers and 53 and above were global thinkers. In the learning exercise, the participants came in and sat down at a computer, finding it ready at the first page in the site, which explained the task. They then completed a short multiple-choice pre-test questionnaire to assess their knowledge of the subject area.  View these pages  here.  Then they proceeded to choose a route through the learning material, navigating using the mouse, until they wished to stop, when they clicked on "exit", completed a post-test questionnaire, and were allowed to leave. Before leaving the experiment, each participant was given a debrief sheet, a copy of which can be found in Appendix C (under construction). There were three hypotheses in the investigation. The first was that global thinkers would choose concept maps more often than the linear format. The second was that local thinkers will choose the linear format over the concept maps. The third is that versatile thinkers will choose to use either.