Results showed a significant increase in pupils' knowledge between pre-test and immediate post-test, but as hypothesized, no significant difference between levels of cohesion. No significant difference between types of pictures was detected. After 1 week, knowledge built with a high cohesive text significantly dropped with low-detail picture, whereas, with high detail, or no picture, there was no significant difference. Results suggested that when participants were given a low-detail picture with a low cohesive text, the integration process of the material was more restricted than with a high cohesive text.

The growth in digital technologies in recent decades has offered many opportunities to support students’ learning and homework completion. However, it has also contributed to expanding the field of possibilities concerning homework avoidance. Although studies have investigated the factors of academic dishonesty, the focus has often been on college students and formal assessments. The present study aimed to determine what predicts homework avoidance using digital resources and whether engaging in these practices is another predictor of test performance. To address these questions, we analyzed data from the Program for International Student Assessment 2018 survey, which contained additional questionnaires addressing this issue, for the Swiss students. The results showed that about half of the students engaged in one kind or another of digitally-supported practices for homework avoidance at least once or twice a week. Students who were more likely to use digital resources to engage in dishonest practices were males who did not put much effort into their homework and were enrolled in non-higher education-oriented school programs. Further, we found that digitally-supported homework avoidance was a significant negative predictor of test performance when considering information and communication technology predictors. Thus, the present study not only expands the knowledge regarding the predictors of academic dishonesty with digital resources, but also confirms the negative impact of such practices on learning.

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Training medical professionals for hand hygiene is challenging, especially due to the invisibility of microorganisms to the human eye. As the use of virtual reality (VR) in medical training is still novel, this exploratory study investigated how preexisting technology acceptance and in-training engagement predict VR hand hygiene performance scores. The effect of training in the VR environment on the behavioral intention to further use this type of training device (a component of technology acceptance) was also investigated. Participants completed a VR hand hygiene training comprising three levels of the same task with increasing difficulty. We measured technology acceptance, composed of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and behavioral intention, pre- and post-training, and in-training engagement using adaptations of existing questionnaires. We used linear regression models to determine predictors of performance in level-3 and of behavioral intention to further use VR training. Forty-three medical students participated in this exploratory study. In-training performance significantly increased between level-1 and level-3. Performance in level-3 was predicted by prior performance expectancy and engagement during the training session. Intention to further use VR to learn medical procedures was predicted by both prior effort expectancy and engagement. Our results provide clarification on the relationship between VR training, engagement, and technology acceptance. Future research should assess the long-term effectiveness of hand hygiene VR training and the transferability of VR training to actual patient care in natural settings. A more complete VR training could also be developed, with additional levels including more increased difficulty and additional medical tasks.

Multimedia learning research pointed out that adding a picture to a text is not systematically beneficial to learners. One of the most influential factors is the necessity for learners to identify mutually referring information in the written and pictorial representations. This study investigates how Cross-Representational Signaling (CRS) facilitates learning from multimedia document. In this study, CRS is implemented by mutually referring visual and verbal cues which highlight semantic links between text and picture. Two versions of the same multimedia document explaining the risks of being caught in a rapid, with or without CRS, are compared. The study that is still ongoing will provide data on online processing (eye-tracking data) and learning outcomes. The results will provide insights on the use of CRS to improve the design of instructional diagrams.