Associating learners' cognitive style with their navigation behaviors: A data-mining approach

Abstract

Investigating how learners' individual differences affect their navigation behavior can help us understand learners' preferences and can be used to develop the Web-based learning system that can meet learners' needs. Among various individual differences, learners' cognitive styles need to be considered because it is concerned how users process information. There is also a need to examine the relationship between their navigation behavior and performance because such findings can be used to suggest suitable navigation tools to meet learners' real needs. To this end, the aims of this study tend to use a data mining approach to not only investigate the relationship between learners' cognitive styles and their navigation behavior but also analyze how their navigation behavior influence performance. The results indicate that holists and serialists have different navigation behavior. However, there is no direct relationship between learning performance and navigation behavior. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.