Instructional treatments, advance organizers and novice performance on a telecommunications network

Abstract

Recent advances in technologies designed for general population use (eg. autobank, mobile phone, video recorder) necessitate users to acquire information quickly and easily, about how a particular device should be operated. However it is often the case that technological devices and accompanying instructions, are not `user-friendly', and are difficult to operate for `lay learners', since learning must often occur individually, without verbal instruction, or assistance from experts or teachers. The current study set out to investigate the usability of a mobile phone network in an experiment lasting 4 hours with 94 student participants. It aimed to investigate (a) how advance organizers might ..