Gasparinatou, A., & Grigoriadou, M. (2011). Supporting students' learning in the domain of computer science. Computer Science Education, 21(1), 1-28.

Gasparinatou, A.; Grigoriadou, M.

2011

Gasparinatou, A., & Grigoriadou, M. (2011). Supporting students' learning in the domain of computer science. Computer Science Education, 21(1), 1-28.

Previous studies have shown that students with low knowledge understand and learn better from more cohesive texts, whereas highknowledge students have been shown to learn better from texts of lower cohesion. This study examines whether high-knowledge readers in computer science benefit from a text of low cohesion. Undergraduate students (n ¼ 65) read one of four versions of a text concerning Local Network Topologies, orthogonally varying local and global cohesion. Participants’ comprehension was examined through free-recall measure, text-based, bridging-inference, elaborative-inference, problem-solving questions and a sorting task. The results indicated that high-knowledge readers benefited from the lowcohesion text. The interaction of text cohesion and knowledge was reliable for the sorting activity, for elaborative-inference and for problem-solving questions. Although high-knowledge readers performed better in text-based and in bridging-inference questions with the low-cohesion text, the interaction of text cohesion and knowledge was not reliable. The results suggest a more complex view of when and for whom textual cohesion affects comprehension and consequently learning in computer science.

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