Assessing Acceptance of Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems: Prior Knowledge vs. Cognitive Styles

Perceived usefulness and ease of use have proved to be key determinants of the acceptance and usage of e-learning systems. On the contrary, little is known about students‟ perceptions in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems (AEHS). In this paper, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was utilized to investigate university students‟ attitudes towards AEHSs. The goal of the study was to investigate whether students‟ perceptions towards AEHS that adapts basing on cognitive styles were comparable to perceptions of students using AEHS that adapts basing on prior knowledge. This is part of a project to determine how prior knowledge and cognitive styles could be combined in AEHS to maximize learning and comprehension of educational materials. To this end, the study presented in this paper developed two AEHSs, one tailored to students‟ prior knowledge while the other to their cognitive styles with emphasis on Holist-Serialist dimension. Comparative effects of using the two systems employing perceptions and attitudes as a measure were then investigated. In total, 104 students participated in the study, 60 students using the prior knowledge version while 44 participated on the cognitive styles version. The findings indicate that students using the cognitive styles version had more positive attitudes and perceptions towards their version than those who used the prior knowledge version. The implications of these results for the design of effective AEHSs combining prior knowledge and cognitive styles are discussed.