Long form or microcontent? An analysis of supports for digital content courseware

Abstract

The use of digital educational resources has expanded considerably, including in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the educational materials used in these resources, the Microcontent (MC) format predominates, with its fragmented and small information units. So, we ask: can the LongForm (LF) format, which allows the presentation of dense and extensive content, be a viable alternative to MC, when applied to complex educational content, specific to undergraduate courses? The LF, hypothetically, can offer better support for higher distance education courses. To answer the question, an educational activity, elaborated in both formats, was applied to 67 students from a university of Minas Gerais state, in Brazil. The observation of student activity revealed their preferences: MC has shown to be good for building learning with smaller materials in both size and content complexity, but LF was more appropriated when dealing with complex, dense, multimedia-requiring contents to facilitate understanding. It was confirmed that the LF presents itself as a viable alternative for online studying because it is constituted by a single virtual space where larger texts and varied multimedia resources can be inserted to enrich the educational material and to offer the full content for students.