Modality and placement of a pedagogical adviser in individual interactive learning

Fifty‐eight graduate students in an education programme took a 40‐minute computer‐based instructional module on introductory statistics with a built‐in solicited guidance mechanism. Students were randomly assigned to programs that used one of four types of advisement: on‐screen digitised video of a human adviser, on‐screen text‐based adviser, pull‐down digitised video of a human adviser or pull‐down text‐based adviser. Results indicated that the on‐screen video‐based adviser condition resulted in higher adviser use than both the text‐based and video‐based pull‐down adviser conditions. Adviser use was significantly correlated with performance during instruction, with time spent during instruction and with television hours watched per week, but not with retention scores. Two non‐significant but suggestive findings were that the video‐based on‐screen advisers were used twice as much as text‐based on‐screen advisers, and active learners used advisement three times as often as passive learners.